Alternative Interpretations of Christ Identity (Dual nature) in the Church. There are three strands of historical understandings of Christ. The first category consists of those who deny Christ’s genuine deity. The second denies Christ’s genuine humanity. The third category consists of those who confess Jesus’ genuine deity and humanity. DENY GENUINE DEITY Ebionism The Ebionites were a very early Jewish sect who maintained that the Logos was not preexistent. Jesus was a mere man who perfectly kept the Law of Moses. He was the Messiah, but in no sense was He divine. He was born to Joseph and Mary in a normal fashion, but had the Spirit of God descend on Him in a special way at His baptism in reward of His perfect obedience to the Mosaic Law. Jesus was not born divine, but was adopted into divinity, though not the divinity of the Father. Dynamic Monarchianism Also known as Adoptionistic Monarchianism, this view of the Godhead attempted to preserve monotheism by denying the absolute deity of Jesus Christ. Jesus was a mere man, but became endowed with the Holy Spirit in a special way at some point in His life (usually attributed to the time of His baptism or birth). Jesus was the logos and was homoousis (of the same essence) with the Father, but in the same sense as a man’s reason is homoousios to himself. The logos was not God in the strict sense however, for the same logos was present in all men in degree. The man Jesus merely experienced the operation of this power to such an extent that the logos penetrated the humanity of Christ progressively, resulting in eventual deification.1 The founder of this view was Theodotus of Byzantium. Its most famous proponent, however, was Paul of Samosota. This teaching is akin to Ebionism. DENY GENUINE HUMANITY Docetism This group of Christians took their name from the Greek word dokew meaning to seem, appear. They maintained that Jesus was divine, but not human. He only appeared to be a genuine human being. His sufferings and death were mere illusions. There was no substance to his humanity, nor any real human nature. This teaching was an early form of Gnosticism. Gnosticism Gnosticism encompasses many diverse views, but certain teachings common to all veins of gnosticism can be gleaned. Working with a Platonic framework which equated matter with evil and spirit with good, they taught that the material man was evil. Some men, however, had the divine spark of The Ultimate Death within them, but were unaware of the divine spark. In order to become aware of their divinity they needed someone to manifest to them this knowledge (Greek gnosis, hence Gnosticism). Jesus Christ is identified as the one who came to bring this awareness to men. Since matter is evil, Jesus Christ could not have had a physical body, but was a spirit body instead. In this respect Gnosticism models Docetism. Arianism Although this teaching had its origin in Lucian of Antioch, its most famous propagator and developer was Arius of Alexandria, from whence it bears its name. Arius taught that because God is immutable, His essence cannot be communicated to any other.2 This being so, the Son could not be considered to be God. Jesus was said to be the first creation of God. In turn, Jesus created everything else. The famous cry of the Arians concerning Jesus was, There was once when he was not. He was divine, but not deity. Only the Father was eternal and immutable. The Son was not consubstantial, coeternal, or coequal with the Father. Essentially the Son is a demigod, being neither God, nor man. He serves as a buffer between the physical realm and the heavenly realm, belonging completely to neither. Apollinarianism Apollinarius is the father of the theological position named after him. Apollinarius believed Jesus to be one person, both divine and human, but believed that the divine Logos replaced the rational spirit (nous) as the animating principle in the human Christ. In his Christology, then, a human body and soul were joined to the divine Logos. The Logos was the interior of Christ that had been fused to human flesh.3 As a result of the fusion, Christ had only one nature, not two. CONFESSED FULL HUMANITY AND DEITY Nestorianism The main proponents of this view were Nestorius and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Theodore confessed the full humanity and deity of Christ, but suggested that the union of the divine logos and the humanity of Jesus was not an essential unity, but a moral unity. The union was functional, not ontological. The full humanity of Christ obeyed the full deity of the logos, thus resulting in a behavioral unity. Nestorius also confessed the full humanity and deity of Christ. He identified each nature of Christ with the Greek prosopon (person), thus splitting Christ into two persons.. He refused to attribute to the divine nature the human acts and sufferings of the man Jesus. He did not see any communicatio idiomatum (a Latin term meaning communication of attributes) between Christ’s two natures. The two natures of Christ were only joined by will. Eutychianism Also known as Monophysitism (mono = one; physis = nature), this teaching was espoused by Eutyches, a monk who lived in Constantinople. Eutyches taught that the Logos had two natures before the incarnation, but after the incarnation Jesus only had one nature which was clothed in human flesh. He maintained the full deity and humanity of Christ, but in explaining the unity of the two natures he denied that Jesus’ humanity was essentially the same as all others’ humanity because in the incarnation the Logos absorbed the human nature. The result was that neither nature retained its respective properties, i.e. that which makes each nature (divine and human) what it truly is metaphysically. Rather a tertium quid (third substance) resulted, which was neither purely Logos or human, but something wholly other. In the incarnation then, both the divine nature and human nature fused into one new nature. This new nature was not not God because the deity of the Logos subsumed the humanity in the union of the two. DO YOU KNOW WHICH ONE ARE WE (UPC)?COMMENT YOUR ANSWER.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 08:06:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015