Which Is the Real Jesus?

For many people - especially in the western world - the question "Which Is the Real Jesus?" is a sort of grab-bag game, or a cafeteria-style choosing of what suits your taste. The result is often a smorgasbord serving of logically contradictory, half-baked notions. This semester I'm auditing a course on Christology, and I thought it might be helpful to share some of it with you.

Christology sets us apart from other monotheistic religions including neo-atheism. It is the lynchpin of our theology, implicit in the Old Testament and explicit in the New Testament. It includes the two natures, two energies and two wills in one Person of Christ. Orthodox Christian theology possesses an intimate link between Christology and theosis – the deification of mankind. There is not a 3-stage process of justification, salvation, and sanctification. With Orthodox Christianity there is only one process: deification/theosis. Our anthropology flows from the Incarnation and to our deification.

St. Athanasius in The Incarnation of the Word (preface by C. S. Lewis) wrote that the image of God in man was defaced by the Fall, as a face in a painting is defaced by dirt, fading and with painting over it. It is renewed by the One from Whom the image was painted to come and renew the image. The image could not be renewed without death and sinful corruption being eliminated. For this reason it was required that the Logos take on a human body, to renew the image. God can't just wave His magic wand or snap His fingers to transform mankind: if God is love, He can't arbitrarily force change on human nature. We don't believe in magic: God only acts according to His nature.

The Son of Man did not immediately come and die on the Cross: He first lived, took on human nature, healed people and taught them to forsake their idolatry, rebellion and self-will. Only then could He heal the deformed image of God in mankind by the Atonement. Death had established a permanent limit to the dominion of sin, to keep men from turning into a demon. Sin is a leprosy that eats up a human body. Christ healed lepers as a sign that He would put an end to death and the dominion of sin.

Thus the Incarnation is the center-point, the pivot of history, it is why we have B.C. and A.D. The Incarnation of Christ surpasses the creation of man – St. Gregory. He said self-emptying and pouring out define the Incarnation (Phil. 2). He wasn't an apparition, but a real skin-and-bones human. It is analogous to the perechoresis, the mutual pouring-out of the Trinity. Without the Incarnation there is no Salvation. Even after the Incarnation, He remained what He was (divine) even after taking on Himself that which He was not (human), preserving His divinity whole: consubstantial with the Father from all eternity, He became consubstantial with us in our humanity.

No change occurred with God in the Incarnation: God is unchanging (apathia) because He is infinite, so by becoming man humanity changes, it becomes deified. Everything in our essence and destiny changed at the moment of the Incarnation. Christ's divinity has no “because” since He is everlastingly begotten of the Father, just as the Holy Spirit everlastingly proceeds from the Father. Everlasting is higher than eternal: eternity is just an indefinite extension of time.

God's saving plan, our Salvation, is part of God's economia, His leniency: St. Gregory contrasts the divine nature with God's economia. He came down to us so that we humans could ascend up to Him. This is part of our pastoral responsibility to explain the apparent paradoxes of Christ's two natures: Son (of God and of man), Word, Power, Truth, Wisdom, Image, Light, Right, Atonement and Resurrection all apply to both natures. Some names only apply to His human nature: man, Son of man, Christ, the Way, the Path of righeousness, the Door, the Shepherd, Archpriest, and Melchizidek. All these names make up the ladder we must ascend to achieve deification.

St. Isaac the Syrian lived three centuries after St. Gregory the Theologian. He wrote on the nature and names of Christ, the divine economia (plan) of Salvation, which is beyond the reach of human logic. Christ became incarnate not only to redeem mankind from sin, but to bring mankind to theosis/deification - to be "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4), to make God's love perfectly manifest to man, to “make us captives of His love.” He “humbled himself with such humility” to become man and demonstrate God's love. Creation could not gaze upon God unless He assumed human nature, accepting a part of it (creation). St. Isaac taught that God coming to earth is of universal significance, directly related to the destiny of the cosmos.

St. Gregory Palamas wrote that the nature of the first-formed Adam did not need healing because it was not damaged. Christ had to assume Adam's fallen nature because that was what needed healing. Augustine on this point wrote that we assume Adam's guilt. But Christ assumed Adam's damaged nature that leads to death, not Adam's sinful nature. Christ sweated blood because of the fear of death. He wept. He grieved for the dead daughter of Jairus.

His birth, not from a usual mingling of a man and woman, but from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary who remained always virgin, is precisely, singularly the reason why Christ continued to have a divine nature as well as a human nature. Mary remained the Bride of God, never having children by Joseph. Only if God would have died, could Mary have children by Joseph.

It is only because Christ assumed fallen human nature that He could redeem that nature. His human nature was affected by His divine nature: communicatio idiomatum – communication or intermingling of natures, even as a zygote. He did not, however, inherit Adam's fallen predisposition to sin. He was tempted, but was able to overcome temptation by His divine nature. When we partake of this divine nature, we too can overcome temptation.

There you have it: Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, not half-god and half-man, nor God who only appeared to be man, nor merely a godly man. In Him both the divine and human natures are united without confusion in one Hypostasis, one Person. I hope you've enjoyed this brief introduction to Christology!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 07 Nov. 2015.)