Christology

The Church historically believed Jesus Christ to be fully God and fully human. The Council of Chalcedon denounced heresies such as Eutychianism, Arianism, Apollinarianism, and Nestorianism. Anselm argued that Jesus had to be fully divine and fully human to accomplish salvation. Martin Luther and Holdrich Zwingli had a controversy over the Lord's Supper, accusing each other of heresy. Gottfried Thomasius suggested that Christ gave up his divine attributes during the Incarnation. Friedrich Schleiermacher emphasized Jesus as an ideal, and Rudolf Bultmann advocated for demythologizing the text. John Hick argued against Jesus being God, while Thomas Morris affirmed the historical perspective. The Jesus Seminar questioned the authenticity of Jesus' sayings. Week 6, this is Chapter 17, The Person of Jesus Christ. In this we have chapters 17 through 20, The Person of Jesus Christ, The Atonement, Resurrection and Ascension, and The Holy Spirit. Key terms are Docetism, Ebionism, Arianism, Council of Nicaea, Creed of Nicaea, Council of Constantinople, Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Council of Ephesus, Eutychianism, Monophysitism, Macedonian Creed, Second Council of Constantinople, Communication of Properties, Canonic Model, Demythologization, Quest for the Historical Jesus, and Jesus Seminar. Key people are Irenaeus, Arius, Constantine, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, Apollinarius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Nestorius, Cyril of Alexandria, Eutychus, Martin Luther, Holdrich Zwingli, Gottfried Thomasius, Rudolf Bultmann, Friedrich Schleiermacher, N.T. Wright, John Hick. Key points. The Church has historically believed Jesus Christ to be fully God and fully human in one person. It further has believed that he will remain fully God and fully human forever. At the Fourth Ecumenical Council, the Council of Chalcedon, the Chalcedonian Creed was composed. There Eutychianism, Arianism, Apollinarianism, and Nestorianism were all denounced as heresies. According to Anselm, this is number three, according to Anselm, in order for Jesus to be able to accomplish salvation, his person could not be a divine nature becoming a human nature, nor a human nature becoming a divine nature, nor two natures simply joining together. Instead, it required one who is both fully divine and fully human. Number four, a controversy between Martin Luther and Holdrich Zwingli broke out regarding the Lord's Supper. Zwingli accused Luther of Eutychianism, while Zwingli's opponents accused him of Nestorianism. Number five, Gottfried Thomasius with his Canonic Model suggested that Christ could not have maintained his full divinity during the Incarnation. Christ gave himself over to full human limitation. This self-denial meant that while he did not give up his eminent divine attributes, he did give up his relative divine attributes. Chapter Summary. The Church has historically believed Jesus Christ to be fully God and fully human in one person. However, there is belief that he will remain fully God and fully human forever. While affirming both Christ's deity and his humanity, the Church has also recognized Christ to have lived a sinless life and that all of this was necessary in order to accomplish salvation for humanity. The Church has not always been unified on its teachings concerning the person of Jesus Christ. Some have denied the full deity of Christ, while others have denied his full humanity. A remarkable unity exists between the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and the Protestant Churches concerning this doctrine. The Early Church. The early writers of the New Testament spoke of the pre-incarnate existence of Christ. Indeed, he is said to have existed before the foundation of the world. It was the eternal Word that became incarnate through a virgin conception in birth. Jesus Christ humbled himself and became the God-man. Docetism was one of the earliest heresies in the Church. It denied the full humanity of Jesus. Catholics believed that Jesus only appeared to be human, though he was actually a spirit being. Ignatius countered this heresy by insisting on the full humanity of Christ. He supported his case by pointing to the truly human experiences of Jesus. He was born, he ate and drank, he was persecuted, he was crucified, dead, buried, and resurrected. He was of the family of David. Early Christians, such as Melita of Sardis and Justin Martyr, continued affirming both the full deity and full humanity of Christ. The incarnation neither diminished Christ's deity nor elevated his humanity to the level of a superhuman. Next paragraph, Irenaeus encountered another heresy called Ebionism, which insisted that Jesus was only a man in whom the presence of God was able to work with great power. Irenaeus argued that man cannot be saved unless Jesus was both fully man and God. He believed that Jesus' work would have no effect for salvation if he was only a man and not also God. Indeed, he argued that only God can forgive sins. Several proofs for Christ's deity were offered by the early church theologians. His deity was proven by the following, the fact that he is the object of worship and the one to whom prayers are offered, the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, Jesus' own testimony, miracles, and divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, Jesus' claiming to be from heaven, his granting immortality, his preexistence, his eternality, and his claiming to be one with the Father. Next, Arianism was one of the most significant heresies in the early church. Arianists believed that God could not share his deity with any other being. To do so would mean that there were two gods. He suggested that the eternal and unbegotten God created his son Jesus. Jesus is thus, according to Arius, a created being and not eternal. Furthermore, Jesus does not share the same nature with the Father. Though the church became alarmed with Arius' teachings, it was the state that took action. Constantine, the emperor of the Roman Empire, feared division within the empire. When he heard Arius' teachings, he called the church's first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea. Eusebius of Caesarea put forth a creed that had been recited at his church, and this creed may have been a basis for the Creed of Nicaea that would later be produced. The Creed of Nicaea not only affirmed the full deity of Jesus, but also condemned Arian beliefs. Only two out of more than 300 theologians in attendance joined Arius in refusing to sign the creed. Consequently, Arius was banished with the warning to put an end to the teaching of his heretical views. After avoiding his controversial teachings for some time, Arius was reinstated by the emperor. As a result, Arianism was allowed influence and would come to dominate. In the face of this Arian domination, Athanasius championed the Nicene faith and would find himself exiled five times as a result of his defense. Athanasius further countered modalism or subalienism, which believes that the father and the son are simply different names for the one God who revealed himself at different times by those names. Athanasius rejected the notion that the father and the son are not two distinct persons. The Nicene faith of Athanasius would prove victorious over Arianism and would be reaffirmed at the Second Ecumenical Council, the Council of Constantinople. Here, the Nicene Creed would be modified slightly and would be renamed the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Apollinarius believed that in taking on human nature, the Word became united with only a body and not a soul. His soul was said to be replaced by the divine Word. Thus, Jesus was not an ordinary human being. Gregory of Nazianzus opposed Apollinarius by pointing out that his concept of Christ's humanity was not humanity at all. If Christ lacked an essential component of human nature, then he was not human. Thus, to say that Christ did not have a soul rendered him something other than a human. In other words, Gregory of Nazianzus taught that if Christ only took on part of human nature in his incarnation, he could only redeem that part. At the Council of Constantinople, Apollinarianism was condemned as a heresy. Yet another heresy called Nestorianism would be dealt with in the early Church. In the discussion of the traditional title for the Virgin Mary, Theotokos, Nestorius was accused by Cyril of Alexandria of believing something that he clearly denied. Nevertheless, the heresy would be penned on Nestorius. The heresy concerned two major tenets. The first tenet suggested that Jesus was composed of two distinct persons who worked together, while the second tenet suggested that a union of a human and divine nature would have invoked change in God. Cyril argued that the Eternal Son, united with a human nature, Cyril's accusations would secure the condemnation of the Nestorian heresy at the Council of Ephesus. One last heresy dealt with during the early Church was Eutychianism, named after Eutychus. This heresy combined the two natures of Christ into one different nature. This sort of view is an example of monophysitism, the belief that Jesus only possessed one nature. Eutychus believed that both of Jesus' natures existed in the Incarnation, but these two were united in such a way at the Incarnation that Jesus only had one remaining nature. Thus, Christ did not share the same nature with humanity. In the end, the Church rejected Eutychianism and concluded that Christ has two complete natures that maintain their respective properties in the Incarnation. Furthermore, Christ's human nature was said to be the same as other humans. At the Fourth Ecumenical Council, the Council of Chalcedon, the Chalcedonian Creed was composed. Eutychianism, Arianism, Apollinarianism, and Nestorianism were all denounced as heresies. The Chalcedonian Creed established the Church's Christology for the most part, though monophysitism resurfaced after Chalcedon, who would be officially condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople. The Middle Ages Little develops during the Middle Ages concerning the doctrine of the person of Christ. Anselm reasoned in his Why God Became Man that the only one who can save humanity is the one who is both God and man. This person would not be a divine nature becoming a human nature, nor a human nature becoming a divine nature, nor two natures simply joining together. Instead, it required one who is both fully divine and fully human. Thus Anselm affirmed the traditional belief in the God-man. Thomas Aquinas also reflected the traditional view. Aquinas addressed the Church's view of the communication of properties, whether as properties speak of Christ's qualities in one nature while referring to his other nature. He concluded that what is said of either nature may be said of God or man, since both God and man refer to the one person of Jesus Christ. Aquinas therefore reaffirmed the Church's historic position. The Reformation and Post-Reformation As it was during the Middle Ages, the Reformation brought very little change regarding the doctrine of the person of Christ. Nevertheless, a controversy between Martin Luther and Holder exwingly broke out regarding the Lord's Supper. The issue concerned the presence of Christ during the meal. Luther believed Jesus to be everywhere present. Thus, Christ's body could be present in heaven while also being present at the Lord's Supper. Luther's opponents charged him with heresy, with the heresy of Eutychianism. Exwingly accused Luther of combining the two natures into one essence. Exwingly rejected Luther's position, arguing that because Christ's body has left the world, he cannot be physically present in the elements. For apparently separating Christ's human and divine nature, Exwingly's opponents charged him with Nestorian heresy. Little came of the accusations from either side, and neither was formally charged with Christological heresy. While both the Lutheran and Reformed traditions affirmed the historic Christology, the two traditions differed concerning the communication of properties. While the Reformed tradition denies that the properties of Christ's divine nature have been imparted to his human nature, the Lutheran tradition believes that they have. The Modern Period In reaction to the Lutheran stance on the communication of properties, modern theologians shifted the discussion to the kenosis, or self-emptying. Gottfried Timotheus, with his kinetic model, suggested that Christ could not have maintained his full divinity during the Incarnation. Christ gave himself over to full human limitation. This self-denial meant that while he did not give up his imminent divine attributes, he did give up some of his relative divine attributes. He retained those attributes that characterized God, as he is in himself, such as absolute power, truth, holiness, and love, but he relinquished those attributes that characterized God in relation to the world, such as his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Christ at his exaltation once again possessed the fullness of his divine glory, of which he had divested himself. With his emphasis on feeling and absolute dependence on the world's spirit, which he called God, Friedrich Schleiermacher contributed to the undoing of the Church's historic consensus on Christology during the modern period. He presented Jesus as an ideal, the one in whom the God-consciousness reached its peak. What set Jesus apart from other men was his absolute dependence on the God-consciousness. Numerous other modern scholars contributed to the quest for the historical Jesus. Rudolf Bultmann erected a dichotomy between the historic Jesus and the charismatic Christ of faith, claiming that the former was unimportant while the latter is what mattered for the Church. He believed the early Christian teachings to be veiled in mythology. The Christian's task today, then, is demythologizing the text in order to discover a deeper, more existential meaning of the biblical portrayal of Jesus. In T. Wright, we bust Bultmann's demythologization and sought to present a big picture of Jesus' teachings, his miracles, his kingdom stories, and his sufferings and death by placing him within the first century Palestinian Jewish world. Numerous other modern scholars presented other attempts to reimagine Jesus while historic Christology was fading away. John Hick argued that it is logically inconsistent to posit that Jesus Christ could be God because human and divine attributes are mutually exclusive. They could never exist together in the person of Christ. Thomas Morris, an evangelical, responded in affirmation of the historical perspective on Christology, claiming that Jesus was fully human, though not fully merely human. He was also divine. Indeed, Christ has two natures, human and divine, and thus ranges of consciousness. Further attacks came against the historical position in the Jesus Seminar, which studied the sayings of Jesus. Extravagant texts such as the Gospel of Thomas were used in order to discern the true sayings of Jesus. In the end, it was concluded that 82% of the words ascribed to Jesus in the four canonical Gospels were not actually spoken by Jesus. Others sought to legitimize Gnostic documents such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Jesus.