Jesus Christ is both God and Man. He is God, yet He is human like us. He has two natures a divine nature that He got from God the Father and a human nature that He got from His mother. He has two nativities — a divine one and a human one. His divine nature is uncreated. It has always existed. His human nature is created. It began to exist at the very moment when the Virgin Mary became pregnant with Jesus.
If anyone shall not confess that the Word of God has two nativities, the one from all eternity of the Father, without time and without body the other in these last days, coming down from Heaven and being made flesh of the holy and glorious Mary, Mother of God and always a virgin, and born of her: let him be anathema. (Second Capitulum, Second Council of Constantinople, 553 A.D., vol. 14, p. 312, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)
The two natures of Christ are not divided like those of a centaur. The centaur is a mythological creature. The top half of it was human and the bottom half was horse. For attribute click here.
One of the matters that got debated in ancient times was how these two natures were joined together. Some people thought the Jesus was part man and part God, just like the mythological creature, the centaur, was part man and part horse. Others thought that He was a mixture of man and God just as a mule is a mixture of donkey and horse.
The two natures of Jesus Christ are not mixed together to form a different nature that is neither human nor divine. A mule is a hybrid of a donkey and a horse. Jesus is not a hybrid of God and man. He is both God and Man in one Person. For attribute click here.
The Council of Chalcedon defined how the two natures of Christ are joined together. They said that they are joined together without mixture, separation, division, or change in one Person.*
So, if the two natures are joined together without mixture, then Jesus Christ is not a hybrid of God and Man. He is not like a mule. If the two natures are joined together without division, then He is not half God and half Man. He not like a centaur.
The two natures are also joined together without separation. He was always be both God and Man. His human nature can never be separated from His divine nature and His divine nature will always be joined to His human one.
The two natures are joined together without change. His human nature was not converted into a divine nature when He assumed it. His divine nature was never changed into a human one.
The Word who was God did not degenerate into Man, nor was His substance changed, but He appeared as a Man. (Homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Philippians, Homily VII, by St. John Chrysostom, 347-407 A.D., vol. 13, p. 214, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series)
For the created remaineth created, and the uncreated, uncreated: the mortal remaineth mortal; the immortal, immortal: the circumscribed, circumscribed: the uncircumscribed, uncircumscribed: the visible, visible: the invisible, invisible. "The one part is all glorious with wonders: while the other is the victim of insults." (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III, chapter 3, by St. John of Damascus, 645-750 A.D., vol. 9, part 2, p. 48, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)
He is also still one Person. Jesus does not have two personalities — a human one and a divine one. He has only one personality, because He is one Person.
He is God in His entirety. Each Person of the Holy Trinity is God in His entirety, but there is only one God. Each Person of the Holy Trinity is a distinct Person from the other two Persons of the Godhead. Each has His own distinct Personality.
Jesus did not lose any of His divinity when He became Man. He did empty Himself in the sense that He became everyone's Servant. (Phil. 2:5-8)
He did not diminish any of His humanity when He assumed it. Instead, He healed it of its fallen condition and sanctified it. He assumed mortal flesh from His mother and He destroyed the mortality in His flesh by His death. He trampled down death by His death.
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life. (Troparion for Pascha)
And He says Himself in the Song of Songs, "I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley." (Song. 2:1) Our rose is the destruction of death, and died that death itself might die in His dying. (Letter LXXV, paragraph 1, by St. Jerome, 345-420 A.D., vol. 6, p. 155, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)
After His death, His human nature became immortal. (Rom. 6:9)
So then, the question is: How are the two natures of Jesus Christ joined together? They are joined together by permeation. The two natures of Christ permeate each other. The permeation, however, originated with the divine nature and not with the human one. St. John of Damascus wrote about the permeation of the two natures of Christ.
But observe that although we hold that the natures of the Lord permeate one another, yet we know that the permeation springs from the divine nature. For it is that that penetrates and permeates all things, as it wills, while nothing penetrates it: and it is it, too, that imparts to the flesh its own peculiar glories, while abiding itself impassible and without participation in the affections of the flesh. For if the sun imparts to us his energies and yet does not participate in ours, how much the rather must this be true of the Creator and Lord of the Sun. (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III, chapter 7, by St. John of Damascus, 645-750 A.D., vol. 9, part 2, p. 52, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)
In conclusion, Jesus Christ is fully God and fully Man. The two natures of Christ are joined together without mixture, division, separation, or change in one Person. The two natures of Christ are joined together by diffusion. They permeate each other. The permeation originates with the divine nature of Christ and not with His human one.
The mythological hero, Hercules, was half-god and half-man. Jesus is not like Hercules. He is fully God and fully Man.
Steve
* This wise and salutary formula of divine grace sufficed for the perfect knowledge and confirmation of religion; for it teaches the perfect [doctrine] concerning Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and sets forth the Incarnation of the Lord to them that faithfully receive it. But, forasmuch as persons undertaking to make void the preaching of the truth have through their individual heresies given rise to empty babblings; some of them daring to corrupt the mystery of the Lord’s incarnation for us and refusing [to use] the name Mother of God (Θεοτόκος) in reference to the Virgin, while others, bringing in a confusion and mixture, and idly conceiving that the nature of the flesh and of the Godhead is all one, maintaining that the divine Nature of the Only Begotten is, by mixture, capable of suffering; therefore this present holy, great, and ecumenical synod, desiring to exclude every device against the Truth, and teaching that which is unchanged from the beginning, has at the very outset decreed that the faith of the Three Hundred and Eighteen Fathers shall be preserved inviolate. And on account of them that contend against the Holy Ghost, it confirms the doctrine afterwards delivered concerning the substance of the Spirit by the One Hundred and Fifty holy Fathers who assembled in the imperial City; which doctrine they declared unto all men, not as though they were introducing anything that had been lacking in their predecessors, but in order to explain through written documents their faith concerning the Holy Ghost against those who were seeking to destroy his sovereignty. And, on account of those who have taken in hand to corrupt the mystery of the dispensation [i.e. the Incarnation] and who shamelessly pretend that he who was born of the holy Virgin Mary was a mere man, it receives the synodical letters of the Blessed Cyril, Pastor of the Church of Alexandria, addressed to Nestorius and the Easterns, judging them suitable, for the refutation of the frenzied folly of Nestorius, and for the instruction of those who long with holy ardour for a knowledge of the saving symbol. And, for the confirmation of the orthodox doctrines, it has rightly added to these the letter of the President of the great and old Rome, the most blessed and holy Archbishop Leo, which was addressed to Archbishop Flavian of blessed memory, for the removal of the false doctrines of Eutyches, judging them to be agreeable to the confession of the great Peter, and as it were a common pillar against misbelievers. For it opposes those who would rend the mystery of the dispensation into a Duad of Sons; it repels from the sacred assembly those who dare to say that the Godhead of the Only Begotten is capable of suffering; it resists those who imagine a mixture or confusion of the two natures of Christ; it drives away those who fancy his form of a servant is of an heavenly or some substance other than that which was taken of us, and it anathematizes those who foolishly talk of two natures of our Lord before the union, conceiving that after the union there was only one.
Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Prophets of old time have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, and as the Creed of the Fathers hath delivered to us. (The Definition of the Faith of the Council of Chalcedon, Council of Chalcedon, 451 A.D., vol. 14, pp. 263-265, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)
Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts, D.D. & James Donaldson, LL.D., volumes 1-10, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D. & Henry Wace, D.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts
If anyone shall not confess that the Word of God has two nativities, the one from all eternity of the Father, without time and without body the other in these last days, coming down from Heaven and being made flesh of the holy and glorious Mary, Mother of God and always a virgin, and born of her: let him be anathema. (Second Capitulum, Second Council of Constantinople, 553 A.D., vol. 14, p. 312, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)
One of the matters that got debated in ancient times was how these two natures were joined together. Some people thought the Jesus was part man and part God, just like the mythological creature, the centaur, was part man and part horse. Others thought that He was a mixture of man and God just as a mule is a mixture of donkey and horse.
The two natures of Jesus Christ are not mixed together to form a different nature that is neither human nor divine. A mule is a hybrid of a donkey and a horse. Jesus is not a hybrid of God and man. He is both God and Man in one Person. For attribute click here.
The Council of Chalcedon defined how the two natures of Christ are joined together. They said that they are joined together without mixture, separation, division, or change in one Person.*
So, if the two natures are joined together without mixture, then Jesus Christ is not a hybrid of God and Man. He is not like a mule. If the two natures are joined together without division, then He is not half God and half Man. He not like a centaur.
The two natures are also joined together without separation. He was always be both God and Man. His human nature can never be separated from His divine nature and His divine nature will always be joined to His human one.
The two natures are joined together without change. His human nature was not converted into a divine nature when He assumed it. His divine nature was never changed into a human one.
The Word who was God did not degenerate into Man, nor was His substance changed, but He appeared as a Man. (Homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Philippians, Homily VII, by St. John Chrysostom, 347-407 A.D., vol. 13, p. 214, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series)
For the created remaineth created, and the uncreated, uncreated: the mortal remaineth mortal; the immortal, immortal: the circumscribed, circumscribed: the uncircumscribed, uncircumscribed: the visible, visible: the invisible, invisible. "The one part is all glorious with wonders: while the other is the victim of insults." (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III, chapter 3, by St. John of Damascus, 645-750 A.D., vol. 9, part 2, p. 48, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)
He is also still one Person. Jesus does not have two personalities — a human one and a divine one. He has only one personality, because He is one Person.
He is God in His entirety. Each Person of the Holy Trinity is God in His entirety, but there is only one God. Each Person of the Holy Trinity is a distinct Person from the other two Persons of the Godhead. Each has His own distinct Personality.
Jesus did not lose any of His divinity when He became Man. He did empty Himself in the sense that He became everyone's Servant. (Phil. 2:5-8)
He did not diminish any of His humanity when He assumed it. Instead, He healed it of its fallen condition and sanctified it. He assumed mortal flesh from His mother and He destroyed the mortality in His flesh by His death. He trampled down death by His death.
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life. (Troparion for Pascha)
And He says Himself in the Song of Songs, "I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley." (Song. 2:1) Our rose is the destruction of death, and died that death itself might die in His dying. (Letter LXXV, paragraph 1, by St. Jerome, 345-420 A.D., vol. 6, p. 155, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)
After His death, His human nature became immortal. (Rom. 6:9)
So then, the question is: How are the two natures of Jesus Christ joined together? They are joined together by permeation. The two natures of Christ permeate each other. The permeation, however, originated with the divine nature and not with the human one. St. John of Damascus wrote about the permeation of the two natures of Christ.
But observe that although we hold that the natures of the Lord permeate one another, yet we know that the permeation springs from the divine nature. For it is that that penetrates and permeates all things, as it wills, while nothing penetrates it: and it is it, too, that imparts to the flesh its own peculiar glories, while abiding itself impassible and without participation in the affections of the flesh. For if the sun imparts to us his energies and yet does not participate in ours, how much the rather must this be true of the Creator and Lord of the Sun. (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III, chapter 7, by St. John of Damascus, 645-750 A.D., vol. 9, part 2, p. 52, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)
In conclusion, Jesus Christ is fully God and fully Man. The two natures of Christ are joined together without mixture, division, separation, or change in one Person. The two natures of Christ are joined together by diffusion. They permeate each other. The permeation originates with the divine nature of Christ and not with His human one.
The mythological hero, Hercules, was half-god and half-man. Jesus is not like Hercules. He is fully God and fully Man.
Steve
* This wise and salutary formula of divine grace sufficed for the perfect knowledge and confirmation of religion; for it teaches the perfect [doctrine] concerning Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and sets forth the Incarnation of the Lord to them that faithfully receive it. But, forasmuch as persons undertaking to make void the preaching of the truth have through their individual heresies given rise to empty babblings; some of them daring to corrupt the mystery of the Lord’s incarnation for us and refusing [to use] the name Mother of God (Θεοτόκος) in reference to the Virgin, while others, bringing in a confusion and mixture, and idly conceiving that the nature of the flesh and of the Godhead is all one, maintaining that the divine Nature of the Only Begotten is, by mixture, capable of suffering; therefore this present holy, great, and ecumenical synod, desiring to exclude every device against the Truth, and teaching that which is unchanged from the beginning, has at the very outset decreed that the faith of the Three Hundred and Eighteen Fathers shall be preserved inviolate. And on account of them that contend against the Holy Ghost, it confirms the doctrine afterwards delivered concerning the substance of the Spirit by the One Hundred and Fifty holy Fathers who assembled in the imperial City; which doctrine they declared unto all men, not as though they were introducing anything that had been lacking in their predecessors, but in order to explain through written documents their faith concerning the Holy Ghost against those who were seeking to destroy his sovereignty. And, on account of those who have taken in hand to corrupt the mystery of the dispensation [i.e. the Incarnation] and who shamelessly pretend that he who was born of the holy Virgin Mary was a mere man, it receives the synodical letters of the Blessed Cyril, Pastor of the Church of Alexandria, addressed to Nestorius and the Easterns, judging them suitable, for the refutation of the frenzied folly of Nestorius, and for the instruction of those who long with holy ardour for a knowledge of the saving symbol. And, for the confirmation of the orthodox doctrines, it has rightly added to these the letter of the President of the great and old Rome, the most blessed and holy Archbishop Leo, which was addressed to Archbishop Flavian of blessed memory, for the removal of the false doctrines of Eutyches, judging them to be agreeable to the confession of the great Peter, and as it were a common pillar against misbelievers. For it opposes those who would rend the mystery of the dispensation into a Duad of Sons; it repels from the sacred assembly those who dare to say that the Godhead of the Only Begotten is capable of suffering; it resists those who imagine a mixture or confusion of the two natures of Christ; it drives away those who fancy his form of a servant is of an heavenly or some substance other than that which was taken of us, and it anathematizes those who foolishly talk of two natures of our Lord before the union, conceiving that after the union there was only one.
Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Prophets of old time have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, and as the Creed of the Fathers hath delivered to us. (The Definition of the Faith of the Council of Chalcedon, Council of Chalcedon, 451 A.D., vol. 14, pp. 263-265, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)
Bibliography
Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts, D.D. & James Donaldson, LL.D., volumes 1-10, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D. & Henry Wace, D.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts
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