Chapter 03, God the Incarnate Son, The Person and Work of Christ, Hypostatic Union, Monophysitism, Nestorianism, The Chalcedonian Definition, Anhypostasis/Enhypostasis

The Person and Work of Christ

            Traditionally, the study of Christology has been talked about as a study of the Person and work of Christ.  The temptation that can arise when we think about this subject in this way is to treat the Person of Christ and the work of Christ as two separate things.  In reality, these two ideas are intimately connected.  We see in the gospel that the Person of the Incarnate Son is the work of God in our midst, and God’s work among us, in its fullest sense, is the Person of Christ.

            This connection is evident in the Nicene Creed.  Immediately after the statement of faith in Jesus, the Son of God, the Creed states, “Who for us and our salvation…” emphasizing that when we think about who Jesus is, we must remember that he is who he is for us and our salvation.  The Incarnation was not one thing and the saving activity of God something else, but rather the Incarnation is the reality of God’s saving will worked out in history.

Hypostatic Union

            When the church had finally agreed that Jesus could not be thought of without taking into account that he had both a human nature and a divine nature, the question of how those natures were related to each other was raised almost immediately.  For some, this question might seem to be superfluous.  If we have admitted that Jesus is really God and that Jesus is really human, does it really matter how those natures are related?  The answer is an emphatic yes.  In order to understand what is at stake in this issue, let us consider the two major alternatives that were put forward before a consensus was reached at the ecumenical council of Chalcedon in 451.

Monophysitism

            This view literally means “One nature” and so we can already anticipate that this view is going to tend to collapse the two natures of Christ into only one.  The claim is made that Jesus has both a human nature and a divine nature, but, since human nature is finite and divine nature is infinite, Christ’s humanity is swallowed up in his divinity like a drop in the ocean.  In practice, this means that Christ’s humanity is not really taken seriously because it is utterly overshadowed by his divinity.  In the end, while this view pays lip service to the humanity of Christ, in practice, it is as if he has no humanity at all.

Nestorianism

            The Christology that has come to be known as Nestorianism tries to account for the two natures of Christ in a different way.  Whereas Monophysitism tended to collapse the two natures of Christ into one, Nestorianism tends to completely separate them.  There is a sense that there are two Christ’s, a human one and a divine one.  These two Christ’s appear together, but they cannot be combined into a single person.  It has been described as two natures connected like two planks of wood, glued together at the ends.  They are attached, and so they are “one” in a sense, but there is no meaningful connection between them.  What impacts one nature does not necessarily impact the other, which is the point at which this view causes serious concerns for Christian faith.  If a sharp distinction is maintained between Christ’s human nature and his divine nature, the conclusion can be made that some events we see in the gospels show us one nature and not the other.  This is most serious when we consider the crucifixion.  Nestorian Christology, with its radical distinction between Christ’s two natures can easily come to the conclusion that Christ suffers and dies in his human nature but this has no impact on his divine nature since, it is presupposed, God cannot suffer.  However, if this kind of distinction is maintained, we must question what connection the human Christ has with the divine Christ, since the scripture does not give a clear criterion by which to know when they are joined in their action and when they are not.  In the end, this view results in the conclusion that the human Jesus finally tells us nothing certain about God.

The Chalcedonian Definition

            At the ecumenical council of Chalcedon, a definition was proposed that achieved universal agreement in the church.  The creed that was affirmed at Chalcedon says that Christ is “truly God and truly man…consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood…one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.”  This affirms that Jesus is every bit as much God as the Father is and at the same time every bit as much human as we are.  The phrase used to describe this understanding of the two natures of Christ is “hypostatic union.”  This refers to the perfect union of two hypostases (natures) in the one Person of Christ.  The four words describing how the two natures are related to each other are making two major points.

            The first two words, inconfusedly and unchangeably, are ruling a Monophysitist understanding of Christ out of bounds.  It means that the two natures of Christ cannot be confused, that is, collapsed together.  We are not allowed (in light of what is revealed in the Biblical witness) to think of Christ as having some kind of nature that is somehow different than truly divine nature and truly human nature.  Also, the human nature does not somehow change into the divine nature nor the divine into the human or that both natures merge into a third nature.  Both natures are indeed there.

            The second two words, indivisibly and inseparably, emphasize that, though there are two natures, they are utterly united to each other.  We cannot talk about the natures as if they were separate.  Why would we ever want to separate the two natures in Christ?  Historically, the reason has been because of presuppositions about human or divine nature that are violated by the actual fact of the Incarnation.  Once again, as we have argued earlier, if we see that God has actually done something that challenges our preconceived ideas of what God can and cannot do, we must allow the fact that we encounter in the gospel to overturn our presuppositions.  Somehow, even the things that we think are “beneath” God (such as suffering) are taken up in the Person of Christ.

            So, what is at stake in the question, “How are the two natures of Christ related” is extremely important for us because the two views ruled as inappropriate for understanding Christ as he is put forth in the New Testament end up denying one of the natures or the other.  Monophysitism finally denies (for any practical purposes) that Christ really has a human nature, as it has been swallowed up in the infinity of the divine nature.  Nestorianism finally denies that the human Christ really has a divine nature, because his divinity recedes at key points in his life (such as the crucifixion).  If indeed both natures are really necessary for the Incarnation to truly be an act of God that penetrates into our humanity, and it does, for Christian salvation to make any sense at all, then we must come to some conclusion like the one reached at Chalcedon.

It is important to remember that the interaction of the two natures within the single Person of Christ is to be thought of in Chalcedonian terms rather than the two alternatives (which were declared to be heresy).  This view, and the implications that flow from it, will be assumed for all the rest of discussion.

Anhypostasis/Enhypostasis

            To bring clarity to our thinking of the relation between the divine and human natures of Christ, it is helpful to discuss two terms that were coined by different eras in church history to give expression to crucial insights.  The first of these was developed in the early church and is called “Anhypostasis,” which derives from Greek, literally meaning “without person.”  It is meant to express the conviction that, without God entering into human flesh, there would not have been any human Jesus.  What this means is that any view that affirms that Jesus was born under the normal course of natural events and only at a later time was “made” Christ (a view called “adoptionism,” as in, “Jesus was born as just a man but was adopted as the son of God” and was widely condemned as heresy in the early church).  This conviction receives its clearest expression in the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth.  Jesus’ birth was not due merely to natural causes but was the result of the interaction of the Creator of the universe, circumventing the ordinary means of impregnation and taking human initiative out of his Incarnation.

            The second of these two terms was emphasized in the Reformation era and is “Enhypostasis,” which dervies from Greek, literally meaning “in person.”  The central conviction expressed in this term is that in the person of Christ, there is really is a real human nature, that it is not shortchanged or swallowed up in any way.

            These two terms together help to solidify what we mean when we speak of Jesus as being fully God and fully human.  We mean that there never would have been any Jesus or any words or acts of Jesus if it were not for the initiative of God, who always makes the first move and that, in every deed, in every word, and even in the being of Jesus, real humanity is involved.  Jesus’ words are simultaneously divine words and human words; Jesus’ actions are simultaneously divine acts and human acts.