Rev A W MacColl
William Cunningham notes that most parties in the controversies over the person of Christ generally admit the true humanity of Christ.^2 Although the Gnostics^3 in the second century had wrought great mischief in the Church by denying the humanity of Christ, and the Arians^4 in the fourth century had also wrought much damage by denying His divinity, the early Church as a body had always believed in both the divinity and humanity of the Mediator.
The clarity and force of biblical teaching on these points was undeniable, as evidenced, for example, by Paul’s statements in Hebrews 2:14: “For as much as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same”; in Romans 8:3: “God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin”; and John’s warnings in his Epistles against those who denied that Christ had come in the flesh. Regarding His divinity, the Church could sincerely and consistently echo the confession of Thomas concerning Christ, “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28). The question to be dealt with, however, was how the early Church came to the correct way of formulating what it always believed regarding “the scriptural view of the constitution of Christ’s person”. Truth is often brought into clearer focus through controversy and that was certainly the case in regard to Christology, where refuting error signally helped to clarify the true position.
One early heretical opinion was that of Appollinarism, “which taught that Christ had a true body and an animal soul, but that in Him the eternal Son, or Logos [the Word], took the place of a rational spirit”.^5 This view was, like Gnosticism, one that denied the true humanity of Christ. Appollinarians held that, instead of a human soul, the Mediator had either a super-angelic essence dwelling in a human body or that the divine nature of the
Logos dwelt within a human body. Appollinarianism was not only in error regarding the real humanity of Jesus, but it serves to emphasise the dangers which a three-fold understanding of human nature – as consisting of body, soul and spirit – may lead to.^6
The constitution of the person of the Mediator was fully discussed in the fifth century in the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies, culminating in the Church pronouncements of the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Nestorians and Eutychians professed to hold to the decisions of the earlier Councils of Nice and Constantinople, refuting the Arians, and asserting the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. They professed both the humanity and the divinity of Christ but they held opposite views of how the human and the divine existed in Him.
Nestorians taught that not only did Christ have two natures, but that He had two consciousnesses, to the extent that He was, to all intents and purposes, two distinct persons. Now, although Nestorius himself would not have gone quite so far as to assert that Christ subsisted in two persons, his teaching was flawed in that it failed to emphasise the unity of the two natures in the one person of the Mediator. Louis Berkhof wrote, “Instead of blending the two natures into a single self-consciousness, Nestorianism places them alongside of each other with nothing more than a moral and sympathetic union between them.”^7
Eutychians, on the other hand, professed to emphasise the unity of Christ’s person, but they did so to the extent that they confounded the two natures of Christ. They held that Christ has but one nature, a kind of composite between the divine and the human. Eutychianism was condemned by the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, but it later appeared in the form of the Monophysite heresy. Monophysite simply means consisting of one nature. Monophysitism was essentially the same error as Eutychianism but it re-emerged in a particularly strong form in the heresy of Monothelitism. Monothelites asserted that Christ had only one will. This will was neither human, nor divine, but a composite – a third, unique will existing only in Christ.
Alan Cairns summarises the final decision on the matter arrived at by the Council of Constantinople: “The Council of Constantinople in 680 laid down the accepted biblical position: Christ has two natures, and therefore two wills, divine and human. The human is always subordinate to, and in total harmony
with, the divine. By its union with the divine will, the human did not cease to be human, but was so exalted as to be always in harmony with the divine.”^8
The theological outcome of these controversies might be expressed in the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith: “Two whole, perfect and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God, and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man”. This statement of the Westminster divines is based on that of the Council of Chalcedon and simultaneously secures the biblical, orthodox position while refuting the various heresies most comprehensively and successfully.
^1The first two sections of this paper, in the past two months, gave the Scripture basis for the doctrine.
^2 Cunningham, Historical Theology, Banner of Truth reprint, 1994, vol 1, p 307.
^3 Among other flagrant errors, the Gnostic heretics believed they alone were able to understand spiritual truth, and that physical matter was essentially sinful. They thus denied the reality of Christ’s incarnation.
^4Followers of Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria in the early fourth century AD, who denied that the Son was eternal and of the same divine essence with God the Father. They merely held that He was the first of God’s creatures.
^5A Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms, Ambassador-Emerald, 1998, p 32. “Animal” soul here refers to the activity of the soul which is influenced by physical matter, as opposed to the higher activities of reason, conscience and religion.
^6This view that human nature consists of three parts – also called trichotomy – is not generally adopted by Reformed theologians, who hold that human nature consists of “a true body and a reasonable soul” and that the biblical terms soul and spirit refer to the same spiritual essence. See L Berkhof, Systematic Theology, Banner of Truth, 2000, pp 191-6, 306-7.
^7Berkhof, The History of Christian Doctrine, Banner of Truth, 1997, p 105.
^8Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms, pp 232-3.