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Humankind have not the same nature with God: "God is not a
man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent." (Numbers 23:19).
This does not mean, though, that He cannot take on our nature in addition to His own:
"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of
God, did not consider it robbery to be
equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a
bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men." (Philippians 2:5-7). What can
God not do that He wills to do?: "But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He
pleases." (Psalm 115:3). It is this combination of Bible truths: that human
nature is not the same as the divine nature, yet that the Word, God before the
ages, was made flesh, which lead believers to speak of two natures in Christ.
If there are two natures in Christ, are there also
two persons? This might seem an odd question, except it's been answered in the
affirmative. The fifth century bishop of Constaninople, Nestorius, began his career
as a heresy-hunter: "Being ordained on the 10th of April, under the consulate of
Felix and Taurus, he immediately uttered those famous words, before all the people,
in addressing the emperor, 'Give me, my prince, the earth purged of heretics, and
I will give you heaven as a recompense. Assist me in destroying heretics, and I
will assist you in vanquishing the Persians.'" (Socrates, Ecclesiastical
History, Book 7, Chapter 29),- who ended up among the hunted.
Nestorius' system posited two hypostases in Christ, deity
and humanity, and three prosopa, two of which,
deity and humanity, are subsets of the third, which is the union of the two.
Nestorius described the flesh as a subsisting person in its own right prior
to the incarnation: "He [Nestorius] thus says: 'He who is the similitude of God has
taken the person of the flesh.' Also: 'And it is known that God the Word is said to
have become flesh and the Son of man after the likeness and after the person of the
flesh.'" (Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, p. 452,
quotes from Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides). After the incarnation,
which Nestorius considered to have taken place in the womb, he continues to
describe "the person of the humanity" and "the person of the divinity" as distinct,
carefully segregating their attributes and biographies. In Nestorius' system, Jesus'
human traits like hungering, thirsting and sleeping were to be predicated of the
"person of the humanity,"- the "Son of man,"- while divine attributes were
predicated of God the Word. While Nestorius did believe that Jesus Christ
was God incarnate, his segregation of divine attributes from human and his
refusal to predicate both of the same subject could leave him sounding as if he
denied even that: "When many had declared that Christ was God, Nestorius said: 'I
cannot term him God who was two and three months old. I am therefore clear of your
blood, and shall in future come no more among you.'" (Socrates, Ecclesiastical
History, Book 7, Chapter 34).
The new religious movement of 'Oneness'
Pentecostalism effectively teaches something much like Nestorius' system of
two persons in Christ. His complex and difficult system met with the
following rebuff, teaching two natures united in one
person as orthodox:
"Following, then, the holy fathers, we unite in teaching all
men to confess the one and only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. This selfsame one
is perfect both in deity and in humanness; this selfsame one is also actually God and
actually man, with a rational soul and a body. He is of the same reality as
God as far as his deity is concerned and of the same reality as we ourselves as far
as his humanness is concerned; thus like us in all respects, sin only excepted.
Before time began he was begotten of the Father, in respect of his deity, and
now in these 'last days,' for us and behalf of our salvation, this selfsame one
was born of Mary the virgin, who is God-bearer in respect of his humanness.
"We also teach that we apprehend this one and only
Christ -- Son, Lord, only-begotten -- in two natures; and we do this without
confusing the two natures, without transmuting one nature into the other,
without dividing them into two separate categories, without contrasting them
according to area or function. The distinctiveness of each nature is not
nullified by the union. Instead, the 'properties' of each nature are conserved
and both natures concur in one 'person' and in one reality ['hypostasis'].
They are not divided or cut into two persons, but are together the one and only
and only-begotten Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus have the prophets
of old testified; thus the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us; thus the Symbol
of Fathers has handed down to us."
(Definition of Chalcedon).
While those alarmed at the excesses of Mariolatry may wince at the description of
Mary as 'God-bearer' - theotokos - the dispute is not about who Mary was but about who Christ is. There
is compelling Bible evidence that there are not two persons in Christ but
only one: the Holy Spirit does not, as Nestorius insisted upon, segregate
divine attributes from human, ascribing each to its own proper subject.
'Son of man' is, on its face, a title addressing the humanity of Christ,--
yet a divine attribute like omnipresence can be ascribed to the 'Son of
man' in scripture: "No one has ascended to heaven but He who came
down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven." (John 3:13).
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