Bishop's Epistle: THE DUAL NATURE OF JESUS OF NAZARETH (Chapter One)

Christ Pantocrator Sinai

Chapter One
Introduction of the Fact

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful. Counsellor, The might God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

It would be good to begin our study on the Dual Nature of Jesus of Nazareth with a clear and comprehensive didactic statement of faith taken from The Apostolic Creed.

Concerning Jesus of Nazareth the Creed states:

Who, because of us sinners, and for our salvation, became manifested in flesh. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary. This incarnation not lessening His deity, nor altering His humanity; fully God and fully man, consubstantiated. Therefore, the angel named Him Jesus – Jehovah Savior. As to his deity, He is the same essence, nature and being (homoousios) as the Father. As to His humanity, He is a like essence, nature, and being (homoiousios) with us men. Thereby, and because of generation and redemption, reasonably termed the Son of God.

The dual nature of Jesus is so taught in Scripture that none would hardly attempt to refute it. But, to accept it’s obvious conclusions is a matter left to the bolder souls of the scholars.

On the subject of “the dual nature” of Christ there is one personage of history which stands out among all the rest; his name was Nestorius. Nestorius was educated in Antioch, and became bishop of Constantinople in 428. In the neighborhood of the capital the monks were especially fond of attributing to Mary the term “theotokos”, Mother of God. To Nestorius this was unacceptable. Nestorius said that she should be called either, “mother of the man Jesus” or “mother of Christ.” His objection, then, was the same as ours is today against the Trinitarians, that being: the conveyance of human attributes to the divine Logos. The Trinitarians have accomplished this by divesting the Logos of deity in order to make Him man; this the Modalistic Monarchican (Oneness believer) emphatically rejects. Nestorius, as do we, denied that God (Logos) participated in the sufferings of the human nature of Christ. The Position of Nestorius was that the union in Christ, of God and man, was not a union of essence. He would have said that the two natures are not “homoousios.” According to Nestorius the Divine and the Human entered into a relation of constant co-existence and co-working. The divine Logos took up his abode in the man Jesus. There was a reciprocal connection of the two sets of attributes, a mutual co-operation for the common end, but no communication , no interchange of attributes. Only the smaller fraction of the evangelic affirmations respecting Jesus during His earthly life pertains to Him as at once God and man. Most of them are true of Him either as God exclusively or as man exclusively.

Cyril of Alexandria, a man of vehement temper and intolerant …was quite ready to take up the cause of the adversaries of Nestorius (G. P. Fisher, “History of Christian Doctrine”). Cyril’s position is akin to what we find in most Trinitarian circles today. He asserted a physical (or meta-physical) uniting of the two natures. To Cyril, God, the Logos, BECOMES man. After the Incarnation, according to Cyril, the two natures of God and Man are only abstractly considered, but in concrete reality there was only one: The incarnated nature of the divine Logos. The idea of Cyril is that the flesh, i.e. all the human attributes, have become the attributes of the Logos without the loss of His divine nature. The product is a theanthropic person, not merely God, or merely man, but throughout both in one. There is thus in Christ incarnate a communion of attributes. There is one subject, with ONE NATURE, which is divine-human. According to historian G. P. Fisher, “Nestorius argued that such a conception clashes with the distinction between God and man as to essence; that it annuls the immutability of God by imputing to Him a change of nature …” (See Malachi 3:6; James 1:17.)

Cyril made an ally of the Emperor, Theodosius II, who took sides against the Nestorians. Nestorius was exiled and driven from one place to another; he died about the 440. Fisher states further that the theological school at Edessa refused to acquiesce in the measures of the Anti- Nestorians, and it was broken up. The Nestorians fled into Persia and spread far into the East. Their creed can still, to this day, be found among many groups in that part of the world. We are told that when Muslims conquered that part of the world they were kind toward the churches of Nestorius, while they burned others. The reason? They considered the theology of this creed to teach monotheism.

Given below is a late sixth century Christological formula of the Eastern (Nestorian) Church. You, dear reader may see for yourself the truth of Nestorius’ Christology.

Synod of Mar Sabrisho, AD 596

It seemed good to his fatherhood and to all the metropolitans and bishops to write this composition of the faith . . . which accurately and plainly teaches us the confession which is in one glorious nature of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and reveals and shows us the glorious mysteries of the dispensation of God the Word, which at the end of times he perfected and fulfilled in the nature of our humanity, the same by which the heathen are conquered who acknowledge a multitude of gods, and Judaism is judged which does not acknowledge a Trinity of qnome, and all heresy is convicted and condemned which denies the Godhead and manhood of our Life-giver, Jesus Christ, accepting it with the exact meaning of the holy fathers, which the illustrious among the orthodox, the blessed Theodore the Antiochian, bishop of the city of Mopsuestia, “the Interpreter of the Divine Scriptures, explained, with which all the orthodox in all regions have agreed and do agree, as also all the venerable fathers who have governed this apostolic and patriarchal see of our administration have held, while we anathematize and alienate from all contact with us everyone who denies the nature of the Godhead and the nature of the manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, whether through mixture and commingling, or compounding or confusing, introducing, with regard to the union of the Son of God, either suffering, or death, or any of the mean circumstances of humanity in any way, to the glorious nature of his Godhead, or considering as a mere man the Lordly temple of God the Word, which, in an inexplicable mystery and an incomprehensible union, he joined to himself in the womb of the holy Virgin in an eternal, indestructible, and indivisible union. Again, we also reject one who introduces a quaternity into the Holy Trinity, or one who calls the one Christ, the Son of God, two sons or two Christs, or one who does not say that the Word of God fulfilled the suffering of our salvation in the body of his manhood. Though he was in him, with him, and toward him in the belly, on the cross, in suffering, and for ever, inseparably, while the glorious nature of his Godhead did not participate in any sufferings, yet we strongly believe, according to the word and intent of the writings and traditions of the holy fathers, in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, who was begotten before the foundations of the world in his Godhead, spiritually, without a mother, and in the last times was born from the holy Virgin in a fleshly manner without the intercourse of a man through the power of the Holy Spirit. He is, in his eternal Godhead and in his manhood from Mary, one true Son of God, who in nature of his manhood accepted suffering and death for us, and by the power of his Godhead raised up his uncorrupted body after three days, and promised resurrection from the dead, ascension to heaven, and a new and indestructible and abiding world for ever. (Synod of Mar Sabris˚o, AD 596)

Written by Mar Odisho, Metropolitan of N’siwin and Armenia, A.D. 1298

“Qnuma in Greek is called hypostasis, namely, that which underlies the essence, by which the nature is known. And Parsoopa: the Greeks call prosopon: We Easterns, therefore, profess that M’shikha (Messiah) Our Lord is in two Natures in one person. But the question of the Godhead and humanity is brought into discussion in order so as to distinguish the natural properties of each Nature, then of necessity we are led to the discussion of Qnuma (the essence or underlying substance) by which the Nature is distinguished. These facts, therefore, lead us to the indisputable evidence of the existence of two Qnume which are the underlying properties of these (two) Natures, in one person of the Son of God.”

Having shown, as we have, both the Modalist and Nestorian creedal formulas it would be proper at this point to provide the Creed of Chalcedon which details the faith of those churches that remained united with Rome, Constantinople and the three Roman Orthodox patriarchates of the East (Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem), that under Justinian II at the council in Trullo were organized under a form of rule known as the Pentarchy. Those Protestant bodies that broke from Rome in the Middle Ages would be included within this group. Their creedal formula is as follows:

Creed of Chalcedon

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the unity, 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 the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.

By the historical creedal formulas presented above it can be seen that the Lord’s church in differing communities, in all parts of the earth, has universally acknowledged the two natures of Jesus of Nazareth; these being the natures of God and man. Each nature distinct one from the other; each individual nature acting upon, and receiving action from its world without any affect on the alternant nature. E.g. as the creeds have stated: Christ suffered as man, but the deity nature was in no way affected. That is to say: Christ suffered as man, but did not suffer as God. Thus the accusation of patripassianism aimed at Modalism is defeated.

Before we get to Jesus of Nazareth in particular it would be good to review a few of the Old Testament prophets concerning the person of the Messiah (or Christ). Three prophets will be examined: Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Micah.

The prophet Jeremiah foretells of the Messiah’s dual nature in these terms: “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD (YHWH), that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD (YHWH) OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS” (Jeremiah 23:5-6). The prophet Jeremiah foretells of an incarnation of the very person Yahweh into an offspring of David. If there would be any doubt as to in whom this promise was fulfilled one needs but to read John’s account to Christ’s words, in Revelation 22:16, “I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David ….” Notice that the analogy used by Jesus is that of a ‘family tree’. The same idea is introduced by Yahweh Himself in Jeremiah 23:5-6. Here the concept is clearly one of genealogy. Jesus said, of Himself, that He was not only the offspring (i.e. the branch: Jeremiah 23:5-6; see also Zechariah 3:8; 6:12), but, that he was also the ROOT of this great Tree of Life. We may get a good look at the ‘family tree’ of Jesus in the gospel of Luke chapter 3 and verses 23-38. It begins with Jesus, the branch, and proceeds through the tree until we arrive at the tap root in verse 38. This genealogy is through Mary, through David, and on to Adam, who, we are told, was the Son of God! Therefore, God Yahweh is the tap ROOT of David’s family tree and Jesus is the BRANCH (offspring). But in that we have Jesus saying, clearly, in Revelation 22:16 that He was, indeed, both the Root and the Offspring (Branch) we are left with only one unavoidable conclusion, which is: Jesus Christ is, at the same moment, Branch and Root; human and divine; man and God.

Further, there is the witness of the prophet Isaiah concerning the Messiah’s dual nature:

Isaiah9:6 The Human Messiah : “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder…”

The God Messiah: “…and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The might God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

Moreover the prophet Micah also witnesses of the dual nature of the Messiah:

Micah5:2 The Human Messiah : “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me (YHWH) that is to be ruler in Israel;”

The God Messiah: "whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”

The Icon at the top of this essay is Christ Pantocrator, Sinai, which has different facial expression for each side of its face to represent the Dual nature of Christ: God and man. Here each side is mirrored to show the two personas.

Be sure to continue reading the Dual Nature in chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 at the links provided here:

Chapter Two: Jesus is Yahweh Godhttp://bishopjerrylhayes.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-dual-nature-of-christ-chapter-two.html

Chapter Three: Jesus is Human
http://bishopjerrylhayes.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-dual-nature-of-christ-chapter-three.html

Chapter Four: Distinctions Between the Two Natures
http://bishopjerrylhayes.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-dual-nature-of-christ-chapter-four.html

Chapter Five: The Test of Deity
http://bishopjerrylhayes.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-dual-nature-of-christ-chapter-five.html

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