Part 1: Like No One Else | Part 2: Deity 1 | Part 3: Deity 2 | Part 4: Deity 3 | Part 5: Deity 4 | Part 6: Deity 5 | Part 7: Deity 6 | Part 8: Deity 7 | Part 9: Deity 8 | Part 10: Deity 9 | Part 11: Humanity 1 | Part 12: Humanity 2 | Part 13: Humanity 3 | Part 14: Humanity 4 | Part 15: Unity 1
In the previous post we noted that at a point in history, the Son added to his eternal divine nature a human nature—a set of human characteristics—so that while he was still God in every respect, he also became human in every respect. But it’s important to note that his “Godness” does not become human, and his “humanness” does not become God. Why is that?
It helps if we think a bit about the difference between a person and his nature, or qualities. You and I are persons, but we’re different persons, with different characteristics. I have a list of adjectives that describe me: a nature. I’m short, bald, slim, verbal, and older than I used to be. You have a different set of adjectives—though you are of course, like me, older than you used to be as well. Our natures are distinct from our persons.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s reminded us that African-Americans are lots of things besides their ethnicity; more recently, the “Me Too” movement reminded us that women are lots of things besides their physical characteristics. I’m more than just a short person, and you’re more than just someone who’s older than you used to be.
In a similar way, Jesus’ human nature, or characteristics, remain distinct from his divine nature; they’re separate lists of adjectives. Natures aren’t persons, they’re just adjectives. So we can’t say that God the Son, the person, was mortal; his mortality was a human characteristic. Perhaps you’ve heard someone say that God died on the cross, but that is not accurate.
Now here’s where it gets beyond us. God the Son, the person, has the characteristic of immortality in his divine nature, and mortality in his human nature. And those are not contradictions; they are distinct adjectives.
But how can they both be true in the same person?
There, my friend, is the rub.
No one but the Son has ever had two natures, one human and one divine. In that respect he is unlike anyone else, God, man, or angel.
We have trouble understanding unique things, because we learn by comparing the new thing with something we already know about. “Artificial Intelligence is kinda like a really big, really fast brain.” It’s not a brain, of course, but the comparison helps us understand it.
Now, since Jesus is unique, there’s nothing to compare him to; his dual nature is not “kinda like” anyone or anything else.
So we’re stumped; we have great difficulty making any sense of it.
And we should expect that, shouldn’t we? Should finite minds easily grasp an infinite person?
Isn’t there a place for awe, for wonder, for delight as we meditate on such things?
Now, those early church fathers I mentioned in the previous post, after four centuries of exhausting speculation and occasionally violent confrontation, formulated a statement that laid out their understanding of what happened at the incarnation without any attempt to explain how it worked. That statement is called the Creed of Chalcedon, named for the city where they met to formulate it in 1451. (It’s close to Istanbul, Turkey, which at the time was called Constantinople.)
You can find that relatively brief statement here.
Now, there’s one more element in this that we ought to consider: how did the God-man, Jesus, develop from infant to adult?
We don’t know much about that, but we’ll examine what we do know, and allow ourselves to speculate a little bit, in the final post in our unusually long series.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
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