Answer: In the unique person of Christ are inseparably united the divine nature and the human nature without mixture or confusion making him the perfect Mediator between God and men. ~ Romans 9.5
By affirming the eternal begetting of the Son , Christians confess his full divinity. However, there is a risk of making the opposite mistake by not confessing one's full humanity. Already in New Testament times this heresy was circulating and was condemned by the apostles: “ For many deceivers have entered the world, which do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. He who is such is the seducer and the antichrist. ( 2 Jn 7 ). Jean denounces what appears to have been a primitive form of Docetism : the idea that the body of the Logos was not real, but a mere appearance since matter being bad, God, who is pure spirit, could not have united with real flesh. The biblical insistence on the reality of the incarnation ( in carne = in the flesh), the reality of his birth ( Mt 1.1 , 18 ; Ga 4.4 ), the reality of his death ( Jn 19.33-35 ; 1 Pet 3.18 ) , the reality of his blood ( Ac 20.28 ; Rom 3.25 , 5.9 ; Eph 1.7 ), and the reality of his bodily resurrection (1 Cor 15 ), make such a reading of the manifestation of God in the flesh impossible ( Jn 1.14 ; Collar 2.9 ; 1 Tim 3.16 ; 1 John 4.2 ).
This is why, after having affirmed the full divinity of the Son, the confession continues in the same paragraph and the same sentence by affirming his full humanity:
(Par. 2) The Son of God, second person of the Holy Trinity, being true eternal God, the radiance of the glory of the Father, of the same substance and equal to him who made the world, who sustains and governs all that he did, when the times were fulfilled, assumed human nature with all its essential characteristics and common weaknesses, but, however, without sin. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit coming upon her, and the power of the Most High God covering her like a shadow. Thus he was born of a woman, of the tribe of Judah, of the descent of Abraham and David according to the scriptures, so that two complete, perfect and distinct natures were inseparably united in one person, without change or mixture or confusion.
Paragraph 2 concludes by affirming the hypostatic union of Christ: that is, the union of human and divine nature without change or mixture or confusion in one person (hypostasis = person). This doctrine is sometimes called personal union : in one person are inseparably united two distinct and perfect natures. To fully understand the relevance of this biblical truth, let's examine what happened in the Christian Church after the Council of Nicaea in 325.
We have seen how the Nicene Creed refuted Arianism by confessing the full divinity of the Eternal Son of God. After Nicaea the relationship between the two natures of the Son came into play: how could he be God and man at the same time? For Nestorius (381-451), the answer to this question was simple; according to him in Jesus Christ dwelt two persons: the eternal God and the human mediator. This doctrine was condemned as heresy at the Council of Ephesus in 431; which did not prevent Nestorianism from spreading in many Eastern Churches (Marco Polo (1254-1324) mainly encountered this form of Christianity on his journey to China).
One of the fiercest opponents of Nestorianism was Eutyches (378-454) who, to refute the double personality of Christ, insisted so much on the union of his two natures that he ended up confusing them into a single nature in which the human nature was absorbed by the divine nature. The doctrine of Eutyches was a form of Monophysitism ( mono = one + phusis= nature) which affirmed that Jesus was a mixture of divine and human. This new heresy provoked the Council of Chalcedon in 451. This council definitively affirmed the way of expressing the relationship between the two natures of Christ by remaining within scriptural guidelines and rejecting any form of speculation as to the dual nature. This council used the doctrine of hypostatic union to establish Christian orthodoxy:
Following therefore the holy fathers, we unanimously teach that we confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in divinity, and the same perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man (composed of) one reasonable soul and of a body, consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and the same consubstantial with us according to the humanity, in all things similar to us except sin, before the ages begotten of the Father according to the Godhead, and in the last days the same (begotten) for us and our salvation from the Virgin Mary, Mother of God according to humanity,
One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, the only begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division and without separation, the difference of the natures being in no way suppressed on account of the union, the property of one and the other nature being much rather kept and concurring in a single person and a single hypostasis, a Christ not splitting nor dividing himself into two persons, but one and the same Son, only begotten, God Word, Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets long ago taught of him, as Jesus Christ himself taught it to us, and as the Creed of the fathers transmitted it to us
The council both refuted Nestorianism by affirming one and the same Christ without division or separation and it refuted Monophysitism by affirming two natures without confusion or change. The council affirmed the union of divine nature and human nature in one person: the hypostatic union of Christ. It may be helpful to compare this concept with the Trinity. In God we find a single divine nature ( essence ) and three persons ( hypostases ), in Christ we find two natures and a single person ( hypostatic union ).
How the same person is both God and man is a mystery we affirm without fully understanding it. This is without a doubt the great mystery of godliness: God manifested in the flesh ( 1 Tim 3.16 ). However, it is certainly a truth that Scripture teaches when it declares that Christ is God blessed eternally above all, while being descended from the Jewish people, according to the flesh ( Rom 9.5 ). Jesus is the Mediator theanthropos , the God-man: equal and consubstantial with the Father as to divinity ( Phil 2.6 ), equal and consubstantial with men as to humanity with the exception of sin ( Rom 8.3 ).
The hypostatic union allows us to affirm that Jesus, as to his humanity, was not a superman, he was not a half-god man. Jesus, as to his humanity, was an ordinary man like us, the confession goes so far as to say that he " assumed human nature with all its essential characteristics and common weaknesses, but, however, without sin ". Before his resurrection in the flesh, Jesus shared fallen (but not depraved) human nature. His human nature was not homoiousios (of a similar nature), but homoousios (of the same nature) to ours except for sin.In other words, before the resurrection, Christ had weak, corruptible, and mortal flesh. But by his obedience he obtained, at the resurrection, a flesh full of strength, incorruptible and immortal ( 1 Cor 15.43 , 53 ). The characteristics of Christ's human nature before his resurrection were not those of Adam before the fall, but those of Adam after the fall, minus the sin.
This is therefore to say the humiliation to which the Eternal Son consented by appearing " like a simple man " and by humbling himself " until death on the cross " ( Phil 2.7-8 ). But the Mediator, having accomplished his mission, raised human nature to the glorious condition to which God had destined it ( 1 Cor 15:24-28 ; Phil 2:9-11 ). Jesus Christ man currently exists in this majestic and glorious condition, he is, as a man ( 1 Tim 2.5 ), Lord and King over all the works of God.
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