The doctrinal struggles over the real identity of Christ – His two natures – over the centuries.

The notion of redemption, which forms the center of Christian thinking, demands:

a Redeemer who unites in his person the nature of God and the nature of man, yet without confusion.

a Redeemer who possesses all divine attributes and at the same time enters into all relations and conditions of mankind, to raise them to God.

Orthodox doctrine concerning Christ’s nature consists of four elements:

He is true God;

he is true man;

he is one person;

and the divine and human in him, with all the personal union and harmony, remain distinct.

Alexandrian school of theology, with its characteristic speculative and mystical turn,

favored a connection of the divine and human in the act of the incarnation so close, that it was in danger of losing the human in the divine.

the incarnation becomes a transmutation or mixture of the divine and human

Antiochian or Syrian school of theology, with its sober intellect and reflection,

inclined to an abstract separation of the two natures.

a mere indwelling of the divine Logos in the man, or a moral union of the two natures, or rather of the two persons

In both cases the mystery of the incarnation, the veritable and permanent union of the divine and human in the one person of Christ, which is essential to the idea of a Redeemer and Mediator, is more or less weakened or altered.

In opposition to both these extremes, it was now the duty of the church to assert the personal unity and the distinction of the two natures in Christ.

Chalcedonian Confession / Definition : Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon, Asia Minor (A. D. 451)

Authoritative statement of the elements of the doctrine of the Person of Christ

The key section states:

“In agreement, then, with the holy [Nicene] Fathers, we all unanimously teach [Christians] to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ the same perfect in deity and the same perfect in manness, truly God and truly man, the same of a rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father according to the deity and the same consubstantial with us according to the manness, like us according to all things except sin; begotten of the Father before the ages according to the deity and in the last days the same, for us and for our salvation, [born] of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer, according to the manness, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only begotten being made known in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of the natures being by no means removed because of the union but rather the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten, God, Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets of old [declared] concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the [Nicene] Creed of our Fathers has handed down.”

Rejection of the Chalcedonian Confession in modern times Example No. 1 (Johannes Weiss)

It is unthinkable that Godhood and manhood should be united in a single person walking upon the earth; that, while no doubt men of ancient time could conceive that a man might really be an incarnate deity modern men feel much too strongly the impassable barrier which separates the divine and the human to entertain such a notion.

Example No. 2 (William Adams Brown)

Man are no longer satisfied with “the old conception of Christ as a being of two natures, one divine and one human, dwelling in a mysterious union, incapable of description, within the confines of a single personality.”

Importance of the Chalcedonian Confession Doctrine of the Two Natures is only another way of stating the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Doctrine of the Incarnation is the hinge on which the Christian faith and the salvation of man turns.

Doctrine of Two Natures rooted in the New Testament

Phil. 2: 5-7 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Col. 2: 8-98 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. 9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, …”

Nothing new in the 5th century A.D.

Fully formulated from at least the time of Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 225 A.D.)

No one of the disputants cherished the least doubt of this doctrine

Arius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, Euthyches etc.

None of the Monophysite or Monothelite leaders

Monophysitism: After the union of the divine and the human in the historical incarnation, Jesus Christ, as the incarnation of the eternal Son of God, had only a single "nature" which was either divine or a synthesis of divine and human.

Monothelitism: Jesus Christ has two natures but only one will.

Their differences concerned only the quality or integrity of the two natures united in one person (what kind of nature was it?)

Or the character or effects of the union by which they were brought together (how did the two natures interact with each other?)

Chalcedonian Confession: Not the product of a single mind

Product of the church at large searching for an adequate formulate of its vital faith

Large body of earnest believers

Long stretch of time

Living under very varied conditions

Final product:

Not of study only, but of life

Protract and violent controversies: every conceivable construction of the biblical data exploited and weighted; elements of truth sifted out and preserved while elements of error discarded.

Progress of debate: odd appearance of a steady zigzag advance

Arian controversy: Reduction of Christ’s nature to the dimensions of a creature

Apollinarianism: Vigorous assertion of the pure deity of Christ's spiritual nature (against the reduction of Christ to the dimensions of a creature)

Nestorianism: Vigorous assertion of the completeness of Christ’s human nature as the bearer of his deity (integrity of Christ’s humanity)

Eutychianism: Vigorous assertion of the conjunction of these two natures in a single individuum (oneness of Christ’s person)

Chalcedonian Confession: balanced statement recognizing at once in its “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation” the union in the Person of Christ as a complete deity and a complete humanity, constituting a single person without prejudice to the continued integrity of either nature.

Benjamin B. Warfield’s summary statement of the Chalcedonian Confession:

“This key unlocks the treasures of the biblical instruction on the Person of Christ as none other can, and enables the reader as he currently scans the sacred pages to take up their declarations as they meet him, one after the other, into an intelligently consistent conception of his Lord.”

“There is but one doctrine of the Person of Christ inculcated or presupposed by all the New Testament writers without exception. In this respect the New Testament is all but one piece. Book may differ from book in the terms in which it gives expression to the common doctrine, or in the fullness with which it develops its details, or with which it draws out its implications. But all are at one in the inculcation or presupposition of the common doctrine of the Two Natures.”

No mutually exclusive Christologies in the New Testament

Robert L. Reymond concludes his study of the Chalcedonian Confession:

“To conclude, in my opinion, as an apologetical, ecumenical, and clarifying statement regarding the person of Christ, the Definition of Chalcedon remains unsurpassed. No other human creed has ever been written that captures as well as it does the exact balance of Scripture and permits all that the Scripture says about God the Son incarnate to be given their just due. Certainly, the Definition of Chalcedon is infinitely to be preferred to those modern Christological constructions that refuse to reflect the entirety of the Scriptures witness to Christ, and which speak accordingly of him as perhaps a very special instance of the human species but when all is said and done still just a mere man.”

A true incarnation of the Logos, or of the second person in the Godhead. It is:

neither a conversion of God into a man, nor a conversion of a man into God; neither a humanizing of the divine, nor a deification of the human;

nor is it a mere outward, transitory connection of the two natures; but an actual and abiding union of the two in one personal life.

primarily and pre-eminently a condescension and self-humiliation of the divine Logos to human nature,

at the same time a consequent assumption and exaltation of the human nature to inseparable and eternal communion with the divine person.

The precise distinction between nature and person.

Person is the Ego, the self-conscious, self-asserting, and acting subject

Nature or substance is the totality of powers and qualities which constitute a being

The Logos assumed a human person, or united himself with a definite human individual: for otherwise the God-Man would consist of two persons;

but he took upon himself the human nature, which is common to all men; and therefore he can redeem any man he chooses as partaker of the same nature or substance.

The result of the incarnation, that infinite act of divine love, is the God-Man.

Not a (Nestorian) double being, with two persons;

nor a compound (Apollinarian or Monophysite) middle being, neither divine norhuman;

but one person, who is both divine and human. Christ has a rational human soul and will and is therefore in the full sense of the word

the Son of man; while yet at the same time he is

the eternal Son of God in one person, with one undivided self-consciousness.

Duality of the natures

Unity of the person

Philip Schaff brings out the true significance of the whole discussion by stating:

“The whole work of Christ is to be referred to his person, and not to be attributed to the one or the other nature exclusively. It is the one divine-human Christ, who did miracles of almighty power,—by virtue of the divine nature dwelling in him,—and who suffered and was buried,—according to his passible, human nature. The person was the subject, the human nature the seat and the sensorium, of the passion. It is by this hypostatical union of the divine and the human natures in all the stages of the humiliation and exaltation of Christ, that his work and his merits acquire an infinite and at the same time a genuinely human and exemplary significance for us. Because the God-Man suffered, his death is the reconciliation of the world with God; and because he suffered as Man, he has left us an example, that we should follow his steps.”