Christology
The Incarnation
The eternal Son took on a complete human nature without ceasing to be God.
The doctrine explained
The Chalcedonian definition of AD 451 works, again, by fencing errors rather than explaining mechanisms. It says the one person of the Son exists in two natures, divine and human, which are united without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation. Each of those four negations rules out a specific failed proposal.
'Without confusion' and 'without change' block the idea that the two natures blend into a third hybrid thing that is neither God nor man. 'Without division' and 'without separation' block the opposite error, of two persons loosely associated in one body. What remains is a single subject — one 'who' — who possesses everything required to be truly God and everything required to be truly human.
The theological pressure behind this is soteriological. The early church's instinct, expressed in Gregory of Nazianzus' formula, was that what is not assumed is not healed: if the Son did not take a genuinely human mind and will, then human minds and wills are not included in what is redeemed. The doctrine is therefore not speculative decoration; it is load-bearing for the account of salvation.
The hardest live question concerns the limitations described in the gospels — the Son not knowing the day or hour, growing in wisdom, becoming tired. Kenotic theories propose that the Son voluntarily refrained from exercising certain divine prerogatives; two-minds views propose that divine knowledge was not always accessible to the human consciousness. Both are attempts to say something careful about a genuine difficulty, and neither is a settled consensus.
Biblical basis
- John 1:14The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
- Philippians 2:5–11The kenosis passage; central to every model and disputed by all of them.
- Colossians 2:9The fullness of deity dwelling bodily.
- Hebrews 2:14–18, 4:15Genuine humanity, genuinely tested.
- Luke 2:52Increase in wisdom and stature — the datum kenotic models must accommodate.
How the wording developed
- Second centuryDocetism rejected: a merely apparent body will not do.
- AD 431, EphesusNestorian separation of the natures into two subjects rejected.
- AD 451, ChalcedonTwo natures, one person, with the four guarding negations.
- AD 681, Constantinople IIITwo wills affirmed, divine and human, against monothelitism.
Misunderstanding vs. the actual claim
Not this: Jesus was half God and half man.
But this: Fully both, not a fifty-percent mixture of each.
Not this: The divine nature took a holiday during the crucifixion.
But this: The union is unbroken; the person who dies is the incarnate Son.
Not this: Jesus only appeared human.
But this: Real body, real growth, real hunger, real death.
Where Christians differ
- • Kenotic versus two-minds accounts of the limitations in Jesus' knowledge.
- • Whether Christ's human nature was capable of sinning (peccability) or not.
- • How the communication of attributes between natures should be construed.
The hardest question
Can one person coherently hold omniscience and genuine human ignorance simultaneously? Every model pays a price somewhere; the honest apologist says which price their model pays.
For further study
Primary and secondary sources on both sides of this question. Reading the strongest opposing case is part of the work, not a concession.
Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity — Larry Hurtado
The definitive study of how quickly Jesus was worshipped, based on the earliest evidence.
The Incarnation of God — Thomas Weinandy
A careful account of Chalcedonian two-natures Christology and the objections against it.
The Myth of God Incarnate — John Hick (ed.)
The classic revisionist challenge to incarnation doctrine; the position orthodox Christology must answer.
Jesus and Judaism — E. P. Sanders
The historical-Jesus framework most contemporary scholarship still works within.