The Controversy Of Paul's Discussion Of Jesus Humanity

Paul’s statement is aimed at addressing the main issue that both Jews and Greeks have a hard time with and that is Jesus’ humanity. The Jews cannot believe that God would take on human flesh and then submit to crucifixion and death because this would be seen as a denial of God’s omnipotence and immutability. The Greeks, on the other hand, could not believe that God would become incarnate because, to them, heaven is the ideal place since that is where all the forms exist. Human life for the Greeks prevents a person from experiencing the forms in all their glory. As we can see, the Greeks and Jews had a hard time wrapping their heads around the condescension of Jesus, and this would eventually lead to all sorts of Christological heresies. They, unfortunately, did not realize, as Gregory of Nyssa states, “that the omnipotence of the divine nature should have had strength to descend to the lowliness of humanity, furnishes a more manifest proof of power than even the greatest and
supernatural character of the miracles...” The incarnation (i.e. Jesus’ human vulnerability and weakness) shows the otherness, transcendence, and power of God which is a clear sign of his love for humanity. Each of the four Church Councils will resolve a particular difficulty that people had in understanding the intertwined nature of Jesus’ humanity and divinity. The Council of Nicaea was dealing with the controversy that Arius had raised: can we call Jesus “Son of God?” For Arius, Jesus is just a human being who was exalted which means that he was not divine.
This idea is centered on the belief that Jesus was begotten by the Father. If Jesus is God like the Father, then there would be two Gods and this would then compromise monotheism because you cannot have two unbegotten Gods coexisting together in monotheism. For Arius, it was easy to think of Jesus as being created because everything comes from God the Father. This means that everything that comes from the Father is inferior to him because he created these things like Jesus. Arius could not see the distinction between “creating” and “begetting” because he thought of receptivity (i.e. begotten) as non-divine. At the Council of Nicaea the word “begotten” is defined as meaning made of the same substance which then leads to the understanding that Jesus is consubstantial with the Father (i.e.
God). The next Christological heresy was that of Nestorius who questioned Jesus’ humanity. For Nestorius, he wondered whether Jesus underwent the humiliations and feelings of a human birth, an earthly life, and a crucified death. Nestorius could not accept that Jesus’ two natures (i.e. human and divine) were perfectly united in one person because he thought that each nature meant a different person. This confusion about the two natures leads Nestorius to suggest that there are two persons in Jesus. Jesus, therefore, appears human because he appears in a human subject, but he is ultimately divine. The Council of Ephesus emphasized that Jesus speaks about himself in the Gospels as a single person “I.” The Council stated that there is a union in the hypostasis (i.e. person) of Jesus of humanity and divinity, which means that the relationship of the divine Jesus with humanity is one of being both human and divine and not of having a human nature. The unity of Jesus’ human and divine natures into one person would eventually lead to the issue that the Council of Chalcedon had to resolve involving Eutyches. His concern was what happens to the human nature of Jesus in the hypostatic union? Eutyches resolved this question by coming up with the heretical idea that Jesus humanity was absorbed by his divinity like a drop of water in the sea. In order to deal with this issue, the Council states that there are “two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, [and] no separation.” The first two adverbs (i.e. confusion and change) are aimed at Eutyches while the last two (i.e. division and separation) are targeted at Nestorius. The Council wanted to make clear that there is no fusion between the natures and nor does one nature suppress the other. Also, the two natures are not juxtaposed (i.e. side by side) to one another; rather they converge in the one person of Jesus. The next Christological issue to arise was about the union of divine and human activity in Christ. There was a tendency to stress the activity of one principle mode of action which then compromises Jesus’ two natures and leads to the Monophysite heresy (i.e. Jesus has one nature). This idea also suggests that Jesus’ human nature is not the principle of activity but rather it is absorbed by his divine principle of action (i.e. the doctrine of monoenergism). To combat these issues, the Council stressed that there are two distinct wills in Jesus that are not separate but united in his one person. The Council clarified that the word “other,” in reference to Jesus’ human will, does not mean contrary. Jesus’ human will, unlike ours, is not opposed to the divine will. This union of his two wills is important because it means that Jesus was a human being like us, and this is significant because his humanity allows him to mediate our salvation.