Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - June/69

Contributor - T. Hogerwaard

Title - Systematic Theology for members of Consistory - VI

Topic - Consistory

Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of man

In the fifth article we have explained that the Ecumenical Council of Constantinopel (381 A.D.) had formulated that the summary of the Biblical teaching about God is: One Being in three Persons. But now another question disturbed the peace of the Church for an even longer period, the so called Christological struggle. It is not easy to follow. It is even more difficult to see that the definition at which the Church finally arrived, was indeed what should be said, although at first sight it seems a completely contradictory statement. If I succeed in giving you some insight in the issues involved, I will be more than satisfied. In a classroom, with the possibility of questions and answers it would be easier to explain these difficult matters but as this is not possible we have to do what we can do.

How can Jesus be Son of God and Son of man at the same time?

In the first century the Christians confessed that Jesus was Lord, that He was both Son of God and Son of man. They did not ask for more clarification. But after the Gospel had been accepted by those who had been pagans, the difficulties began. For the minds of those men were not blank pages on which the Gospel could be written; those pages were already occupied by Greek ideas about God, as was explained in previous articles. Those ideas included also a psychology, a conviction what man is which was totally different from the Biblical teaching about man.

Greek mythology is full of metamorphosis (change of form) of the gods, that means: they were able to turn themselves into human beings, or even into a bull (Zeus). The Greek philosophical idea about God (see article four) was that He was perfect Being, entirely belonging to the world of ideas, with no involvement in this world. According to Greek psychology man is made up of sarx(flesh), psyche(soul) and nous(mind). That nous is the most important part, it makes a person a personality, the part of man that is related to God. Now the Greek intellectuals among the Christians had heard the Gospel that Jesus, the Son of Mary, was also the Son of God and they began to think how we have to understand it that a man could be God at the same time. Starting from Greek presuppositions the thinking about Christ led to Docetism. "The docetic heresy attempts to make Christ's Incarnation comprehensible by understanding Jesus Christ as a manifestation of the Godhead in history (-age 78)-. Christ is essentially GOD, He is not fully a man, He only appears as such. God is the highest idea and Christ is the manifestation of that idea: His individuality (Jesus of Nazareth) is therefore of less importance. "The docetic heresy is the typical heresy of Greek thought" (79). In those minds, full of Greek suppositions there was no room for the Biblical preaching that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully Man at the same time.

Appolinaris of Laodicea (who died in 390 A.D.) taught that Christ had the human sarx and psyche but not the nous, for the (divine) Logos occupied the place which with us men is taken by the nous. But the Church did not accept that, for if Christ had no nous,.as we have, then the Incarnation is not complete, that means that it did not take place at all. Then our salvation is not assured. Therefore the Church insisted that when Jesus Christ came into the flesh, He took sarx, psyche AND nous. There were varieties of that line of thinking but in order to keep the matter as simple as possible we will not enlarge on it. Moreover, the main idea was the same with all those thinkers. It can also be said that a good deal of liberal Christianity (ancient and modern) is simply docetism: the refusal to accept Christ as God gives Him to us: truly God and truly Man.

The Jewish Christian heresy

Now from the side of Jewish Christians (taken over by Paul of Samosata) came another heretical teaching, which is called the Ebionite Heresy (after the heretical Jewish Christians, the Ebionites). According to them Jesus is and remains God's creature, a particular man. There is no identity between God and Jesus Christ, Christ is not God, He did not exist before He was born and there was no virgin birth. He only received a special -"Sonship of God". Bonhoeffer wrote: "The Jewish-Christian notion - Jesus is the man elevated to be Christ and Son and the Greek notion - Jesus is the man transformed into a demigod - seem to be very similar in the concept of the divinized man. But their origins are fundamentally different" (87).

The Monophysitic and Nestorian heresies

However, these were not the only heresies which threatened to destroy the Biblical preaching about Christ. There were also the Monophysitic and the Nestorian heresies. As the word already indicated (one-nature) the Monophysite teaching was that in Christ the divine and the human nature were united into one nature. Christ therefore was not an individual man, He slipped on human nature like a garment. God's nature, this teaching went, was manifested in ours. Therefore, as a consequence of this way of thinking Mary was called "the mother of God". This was strongly contradicted by the Nestorians; their interest was to stress the fact that Christ had a divine and a human nature; the divine nature completely separated from the human nature. The Nestorians considered a substantial union of the two natures of Christ an insult to the Creator. The title "mother of God" for Mary sounded blasphemous in the ears of the Nestorian,s. But in trying to avoid one dogmatic pitfall, the Nestor,ans slided into another one. For if the complete separation between the two natures is maintained (as the Nestorians did) then the "saving-historical element was left completely on one side. How was human nature to, be redeemed, if it was not permissible to believe in a unity of Christ? (89). So, the one party claimed that Christ's nature was essentially one, the divine nature which had taken the human nature up into itself, thus identifying God and man; the other party was so radical in stressing the separation between the two natures and the impossibility of their union, that it was no longer possible to conceive -of a unity of the person of Jesus Christ and to speak seriously about an incarnation of GOD. One Synod after another was held to clarify matters but the results were not satisfactory at all. Finally the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) ruled that the Biblical way to speak about the relationship between the divine and human element in Christ is to say that He is: "One and the same Christ, in two natures, without confusion and without change (directed against the Monophysites); without division and without separation (against the Nestorians).

So, the definition of Chalcedon was purely negative, but as such it protected the Church against opposite and most dangerous heresies. In this negative definition, the mystery of Jesus Christ, truly God and truly Man, is safeguarded against the destructive rationalism of Greek thinking. You can only understand Who Christ is in faith; the line of approach by intellect is closed.

Christ is: One Person in two natures. Chalcedon was an example of critical theology, it set out the boundaries; it defined what cannot be said about Christ. Everyone who preaches Christ has to take care to remain within this protecting fence.

There is another thing to which not enough attention has been given in the course of the history of the Christian Church. The Bible teaches us that Christ existed with the Father in all eternity. He was: Son of God. But after He had been born in Bethlehem, He was truly God AND truly Man, not only for a time, but in all eternity. That means that when the Incarnation took place, a tremendous change took place in God's own Being: in Christ the human nature had become part of the Second Person of the Trinity. And because Christ is God the Son, this means that human nature has become part of the Trinity which is of tremendous importance. The Heidelberg Catechism mentions this briefly under the heading "Ascension" assuring us that "we have now our flesh in heaven". The Greek fathers gave full weight to this point, as did later on some Scottish theologians. In -our days Prof. Dr. T. F. Torrance of Edinburgh has stressed this point again. Only after and because the Son of God and Son of man had ascended into heaven could we human beings, who are in Christ, be granted the gift of God's own Spirit. To study the Epistle to the Hebrews with this fact in mind is extremely useful.

Far too many Christians limit themselves in their thinking about Jesus Christ to the Gospels, although these describe only what happened to the Lord during His earthly life. We should, however, give also full attention to the letters of the apostle Paul, how he preached Christ, for instance in the letter to the Ephesians and the Colossians. We should also listen to the apostle John who pictures Christ in the Book of Revelation as the Lord of lords and King of kings. That gives us a far more complete conception of our Lord and Saviour with cosmic wide perspectives.

It is far more important to ask: -WHO is Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of man? than to torture oneself with the question: How is the Divine and the human nature in Christ united? The Churches of the Reformation (both Lutheran and Reformed) have not always kept that in mind; sometimes they went beyond the boundaries and limits set by the wise definition of Chalcedon. But perhaps we can write a little about that in the next article.

*) Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Christology. (Collins, James' Place, London, England - 1966.) First published in German in 1960. For this article I made a grateful use of this book; the pages mentioned refer to it. It is clearly written and so elders and others who are sufficiently interested might buy it and read it with profit. It goes without saying that no minister should be without it, the less so as every theological examination by Classis of ministers-to-be clearly shows that this spot in the spiritual armour of the candidates for the ministry is - as a rule - very weak. This book can strengthen the weak spot. After all, the teaching about Christ is the heart of the Gospel; we can never know enough about it.

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