By the end of the fourth century the church had affirmed both the full deity and full humanity of the Son and had arrived at a serviceable doctrine of the Trinity, which would be subsequently elaborated.  During the fifth century the question of the relationship of the divine and human in the person or persons of Christ would come to center stage.

Suppose someone asked you whether Mary bore God or Christ.  What would you say?  How you answer would give some indication of how you conceive of the relationship of the divine and human in Christ. If you say “Christ,” then you would imply that what Mary conceived was only human.  The deity would have to be added or joined subsequently.  There would be only a conjunction of natures.  If you say “God,” then you imply that there is some kind of personal union between the divine and human that exists from conception.

In the fifth century a bishop (Nestorius) was asked exactly this question.  His answer was “Christ.”  This created an enormous controversy with the upshot being that Christ was held to be of two natures in a personal union.  Hence Mary was properly called the God-bearer.

About twenty years later a monk (Eutyches) argued that after the incarnation Christ had but one divinized nature, sort of like homogenized milk.  This also produced a controversy with the upshot being that Christ was held to be both of and in two distinct natures in a personal union.

Chalcedon, A.D. 451, was the creed that finalized all this development over Christ, although the controversy raged on for another two hundred years under some other permutations until finally it split Christendom irreconcilably.  Chalcedon affirms a two-natured, or dyophysite, Christology, and has been the standard for an orthodox understanding ever since, although moderns have bitterly criticized it as being too committed to Greek metaphysics.  Chalcedon does not give an explanation of the person of Christ as much as it provides a set of limits.  The incarnation is not finally comprehensible to us.  Still, we must affirm that certain things are true (and false) if we are to avoid serious theological error.

One of the problems with which orthodoxy struggles is the reality of the human person in Christ.  It holds that the second person of the Trinity became incarnate in Jesus.  But if that is so, what room is left for a human person unless Christ is multi-personal?  The creed affirms two natures united in one person, but the divine nature is already personal.  Does that leave us with only an impersonal human nature?  And is that adequate?

Phil Meade, Kevin Farmer, Dana Arledge