3 Christ’s
Humanity
Christ’s humanity is undisputed, being demonstrable from
all the descriptions of him given in the gospels. Some of the more important
of the numerous texts are “the seed of the woman” (Gen. 3:15); “the Son of
Man” (Matt. 13:37); “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call
his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14); “God shall give unto him the throne of his
father David” (Luke 1:32); Christ was “the son of David, of Abraham, and of
Adam” (3:23–38); Christ was “made of a woman” (Gal. 4:4); “Jesus Christ
concerning the flesh was made of the seed of David” (Rom. 1:3); “the man
Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). Christ was born and died, hungered and thirsted,
grew from infancy to childhood and manhood, was subject to the alternations
of pleasure and pain, was tempted and struggled with temptation—in short,
had all the experiences of man excepting those which involve sin (Luke 2:52;
24:36–44; Matt. 4:1; John 11:33, 35; 13:23; Heb. 4:15; 5:8; Phil. 2:7–8).
What is implied in humanity has never been a dispute
within the church; but as some heretical parties have asserted a defective
or mutilated humanity in Christ, the church has specified particulars:
1. Christ had “a true
body” (Westminster Larger Catechism 37). This was maintained in opposition
to the Docetists (dokein),1
who asserted that Christ’s body was seeming only, and spectral, a phantom of
ghostlike appearance and not solid flesh and blood. This heresy is refuted
by the following: “A spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see me have”
(Luke 24:39); “reach hither your hand and thrust it into my side” (John
20:27); “he did eat before them” (Luke 24:43).
2. Christ had “a rational
soul” (Westminster Larger Catechism 37). This was held in opposition to
Apollinarianism, which would find the rational element for the human nature
in the eternal reason of the Logos. Apollinaris at first asserted that the
Logos united with a human body only. Afterward he modified this by asserting
that he united with a body and an irrational animal soul (Socrates,
History 2.66). Texts
that disprove this are “my soul is sorrowful” (Matt. 26:38) and Jesus
“marveled” (Mark 6:6; Matt. 8:10; Luke 7:9). Sorrow and wonder are rational
emotions, proper to man, but not to God. Apollinaris, from the account given
of him by Gregory of Nyssa (Against the
Apollinarians), seems to have blended and
confused the human and divine natures even in the Godhead, for he asserted a
human element in the divine essence itself. The divine, he contended, is
also essentially and eternally human. There is, thus, an eternal humanity.
Divine nature necessarily tends to the human form, inherently yearns to
become man, and is unsatisfied until it is incarnate. This is the worst
feature in Apollinaris’s scheme, who was nevertheless a strong advocate of
the Athanasian trinitarianism against the Arians. Apollinaris also held that
the mental suffering of Christ was the suffering of divine nature; otherwise
it could not be a real atonement (see Dorner,
Person of Christ). The rational objections to
Apollinarianism are the following: (a) A human nature destitute of finite
reason would be either idiotic or brutal. If the Logos assumed into union
only the body and the animal soul—the
sōma2
and psychē3
and not the
pneuma4
in St. Paul’s classification in 1 Thess. 5:23—he did not unite himself with
a rational nature. (b) In this case, also, he did not unite with a complete,
but a defective humanity. Some of the essential properties of human nature,
namely, rationality and voluntariness, would have been wanting. (c) In this
case, none of Christ’s mental processes could have been of a finite kind.
Nothing but infinite and divine reason could have been manifested in his
self-consciousness. The same would be true of his voluntary action. This
must have been infinite only. There could have been no exhibition of finite
human will or of finite human reason in his earthly life.
3. Christ “continues to be
God and man in two distinct natures” (Westminster Larger Catechism 36). This
statement is in opposition to Eutychianism, which asserts that the union of
the Logos with a human nature results in a single nature of a third species,
which nature is neither divine nor human, but theanthropic. Eutychianism is
contradicted by Rom. 1:3–4, which describes Christ
kata sarka5
and kata pneuma
hagiōsynēs,6
and by 9:5, which describes him
kata sarka7
and epi pantōn
theos.8
Christ, in these and similar passages, is represented as having two natures,
not one only. A nature is necessarily incomplex and simple. A person may be
incomplex, like a trinitarian person who has only one nature, or complex,
like a human person who has two natures and a theanthropic person who has
three natures. A person may have two or more heterogeneous natures, but a
nature cannot have two or more classes of heterogeneous properties. A
substance or nature is homogeneous as to its qualities. A theanthropic
nature, therefore, such as Eutyches supposed, having two classes of
heterogeneous properties, divine and human, is inconceivable. We cannot
think of a substance composed of both immaterial and material properties, a
substance which is both mind and matter. This is Spinoza’s error. But we can
think of a person so composed. We cannot logically conceive of a
divine-human nature. It would be like an immaterial-material nature. But a
person may be immaterial-material. Man is such.9
1
1. δοκεῖν
= to think, suppose
5
5. κατὰ
σάρκα = according to the flesh
6
6. κατὰ
πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης = according to the spirit
of holiness
7
7. κατὰ
σάρκα = according to the flesh
8
8. ἐπί
παντῶν θεός = God over all (things)
9
9. WS:
Dorner (Christian Doctrine
3.280) is Eutychian in asserting that Christ had “a God-human
nature” and in denominating “the God-human personality” “a
God-humanity.” This is confounding and mixing the natures. A
“God-human nature” would be a theanthropic nature. There is a
“God-human” or theanthropic person having two natures, but not a
“God-human” or theanthropic nature having two sets of properties,
divine and human. A “God-humanity,” strictly speaking, would be a
divine humanity, that is, a human nature that is divine. But this is
very different from a divine-human person. Hooker’s statement is
excellent on this point: “Let us set it down for a rule or principle
necessary to the plain deciding of all doubts and questions about
the union of natures in Christ, that of both natures there is a
cooperation often, an association always, but never any mutual
participation, whereby the properties of the one are infused into
the other” (Polity
5.53). Hooker quotes the following from Gregory of Nyssa and adds
that it is “so plain and direct for Eutyches” that he “stands in
doubt that the words are his whose name they carry”: “The nature
which Christ took weak and feeble from us, by being mingled with
deity, became the same which deity is; so that the assumption of our
substance into his was like the blending of a drop of vinegar with
the huge ocean, whereby although it continue still, yet not with
those properties which severed it has; because since the instant of
the conjunction all distinction of the one from the other is
extinct, and whatsoever we can now conceive of the Son of God is
nothing else but mere deity.” It may be objected that the
traducianist seems to affirm a nature with two sets of properties
when he postulates a “human nature” that is both psychical and
physical. But this does not mean that one and the same substance has
both psychical and physical properties, but that two distinct and
different substances, the psychical and the physical, are combined
in a complex unity to which the general title of “human nature” is
given. Each substance has its own properties diverse from those of
the other. But the two are associated in a complex whole, a common
“specific nature,” from which each individual man is derived both
mentally and bodily.