Master 272: Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective, Part 3

In his contribution to the volume, Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective, Donald Fairbairn clarifies what was the central christological controversy at the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451).  In "The One Person Who is Jesus Christ: The Patristic Perspective," he describes the various philosophical and soteriological commitments that informed the opposing positions, drawing from them guidance for how we, today, should think about Jesus Christ and the work that He accomplished.

According to Fairbairn, patristic scholarship for much of the twentieth century has tended to characterize the controversy that led to Chalcedon as centered on how to understand the relationship between Jesus' divine and human natures.  According to this view, one side tended to emphasize Christ's humanity, the other his divinity, and Chalcedon articulated a compromise position.  But Fairbairn argues that this characterization misrepresents the views of the particular individuals involved and fails to do justice to the other concerns that informed and motivated the controversy.

Fairbairn argues that this view gets the historical facts wrong.  The controversy at Chalcedon did not focus so much on the question of whether Jesus had a divine or human nature.  Rather, it focused on the question of whether Jesus was a divine or human person.  (This is my summary and I hope it accurately, if not comprehensively, represents the content of Fairbairn's essay.)  Now the difference between these two questions might not immediately strike you.  'What's the big difference between "nature" and "person" supposed to be?' you might wonder.  It may help to think of the Chalcedonian question like this: "Was Jesus a divine person who added a human nature to Himself, or was Jesus a human person who added a divine nature to Himself?"  Cyril, who defended the orthodox position affirmed the former while his opponents affirmed the latter.  Here is a passage from one of Cyril's letters where he makes this point and describes some of its implications.

"He did not make himself out to be God's Son, but he truly was so.  For he possessed the quality of sonship not from the outside, nor as something added, but as being the Son by nature, for this is what we must believe.  For we are sons of God by adoption as we are conformed to the Son who has been begotten [of the Father] by nature.  For if there were no true Son, who would remain to whom we could be conformed by adoption?  Whose representation would we bear?  Where indeed would the resemblance be, if we were to say that the original did not exist?" (100, from Paschal Letter 24:3, Fairbairn's translation)

To defend his position that it was a divine person (the Logos) who took to Himself a human nature in the Incarnation, Cyril points to the claim that the One who became incarnate (Jesus) was the natural Son of God.  He then goes on to explain why this is important.  If Jesus were not the Son of God by nature, then He could not serve as the model of sonship into which God adopts us when we are saved.  "Adoption" is essential to the kind of salvation that God has offered to us in Christ Jesus, but such a salvation is only possible if Jesus is, by nature, God and not just a man who received or was infused with some divine essence from the outside.

Fairbairn helps us understand Cyril's position in this passage: "First, Cyril sharply distinguishes the true Son, the Logos, from Christians who are adopted sons and daughters of God.  We are not begotten of God in the same way that the Logos is.  He is the unique Son of God, but we are children of God by adoption and grace.  The second noteworthy thing is that even though we are "merely" adopted, God grants us to share in the natural communion that has existed from eternity between the Father and the Son.  To state this differently, God does not simply grant us a relationship with himself, or some kind of fellowship with himself.  Instead, he grants us to share by grace in the very same fellowship that the persons of the Trinity share by nature.  To be saved, to participate in God, is to share this very communion.  In Cyril's mind, this is what God has given humanity at creation, and what he gives us anew in salvation." (95-96)

This view of salvation is at the core of Christianity.  Unfortunately, not many are really familiar with it.  Salvation, in many people's minds, amounts just to a ticket out of hell, some kind of credit arrangement in the bank of heaven, or the gift of a temporally limitless life free of suffering.  These point to some of the real benefits that come with the salvation God offers but how do they come to us?  Answer: They come to us as from a Father to His children.  When we are saved, God does not move us into a merely master-slave, lord-vassal, boss-employee, creator-creature relationship.  Rather, He moves us into a Father-son relationship.  And we know what that relationship looks like, not by looking at the flawed and broken father-son relationships that we see in the world, but by looking at the Father-Son relationship that existed (and exists eternally) between God the Father and God the Son.  If you've never thought about this before (whether you've been a long-time Christian or are just curious about what Christianity is about) you need to consider what we should expect of the saved life if this is what salvation is about.

One more main comment as we wrap up here.  You might understand what Cyril is saying and agree with his position; but you might still be wondering about why there's any disagreement.  Especially if you've been in the church a long time, the idea that God the Son took on a human nature might seem completely obvious, and the idea that Jesus was just a man infused with special divine powers or even a divine essence might seem really weird.  Why would Cyril's opponents think this?  And why should we be worried about such a view?

Well, first, Cyril's opponents could believe these other things about Jesus, in part, because they had a different view about human nature and salvation.  If you don't understand that salvation is the offer of adoption into a relationship and fellowship that, for eternity past, has existed only within the Godhead, then you won't see much need for it to be the case that Jesus was a divine person who took a human nature to Himself.  (Again, it would be good to reflect on your own thinking about this--and read Fairbairn's chapter for more information.)

Second, even though we (contemporary Christians) might intellectually assent the claim that Jesus was the divine and only-begotten Son of God who took a human nature to Himself, contrary ideas may still be present in our minds and influence our thinking about other matters.  Consider, for instance, how conflicted Christians sometimes feel about the idea that Jesus, while on earth, possessed certain divine attributes like omniscience or omnipotence.  Could Jesus be fully human and omniscient at the same time?  Many people balk at that idea.  More classically-minded Christians might be troubled by the idea that a fully-divine Jesus could actually suffer and experience death.  The person/nature distinction (which you might have been tempted to slide past) turns out to be really helpful for making sense of these ideas.  I won't delve into these issues here but allow Fairbairn to spark your thinking about them with this final quote:

"Many contemporary scholars assert, and many contemporary Christians often seem to agree, that a human nature subsisting in the person of the Logos is not a real humanity; that Christ could not really be human unless he were a man independent of the Logos.  This objection flows from an understanding of what it means to be human that is virtually universal, but from a Christian point of view, disastrous.  Contemporary thinkers mistakenly think that one is truly human only if one is independent of God, and tragically many Christians today unconsciously accept this recent concept of what it means to be human without realizing how thoroughly un-Christian it is.  From a biblical point of view, none of us were meant to be independent of God.  True humanity, humanity as God meant it to be, involves life in dependence on God.  Therefore, a person whose humanity actually subsists in the person of the Logos and who lives a life of utter dependence on the Trinity is not a less-than-human person, as much recent scholarship asserts.  Such a person is the most fully human person there is." (109-110)

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.