The Beauty of Nature

Of the endless topics debated among Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants, one that is virtually never disputed is the relationship between the personhood and natures of Christ.

While not controversial in modern times, this was the topic for debate in the first several hundred years of the Church.

There seemed to be endless opinions on just who Christ was.

Was He just an extremely devout man who was obedient to the will of God? Was He a created being that was divinized by the power of God? Did He have one nature or two? If He has two, does this mean He is one person or two? Is Mary the Mother of God or simply the person Jesus Christ?

These questions were sorted out mainly by the two councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, both occurring within two decades of each other in 431 and 451 AD.

The two previous councils of Nicaea and Constantinople had focused on defining the dogma of the co-equal and co-eternal nature of the Trinity. While the condemnation of Arius and his beliefs naturally clarified Christ’s eternal nature, there were still other questions to be answered.

The main question was this: how exactly can God come down to us, take on human flesh, but still maintain full divinity? Most Christians at this time believed as a matter of faith, but a few Church leaders began to dive deeper into this question, and immediately two different camps emerged.

St. Cyril of Alexandria—patriarch of the city at the time—held that Christ was one person in the Trinity with two natures, making Mary the Theotokos, or “God-bearer.”

Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, believed that Christ had two natures, and therefore consisted of the two distinct persons of Jesus Christ and the eternal Logos.

For clarity, he didn’t necessarily believe that there were actually two different beings walking alongside each other, but rather the one person people saw with their eyes consisted of two distinct persons.

Nestorius, unlike St. Cyril, was hesitant to bestow Mary with the Theotokos title, instead calling her Christotokos, or Christ-bearer. Since Christ was separated into two persons in his eyes, Mary only gave birth to the human person of Jesus and not the divine Logos.

St. Cyril, annoyed that such a high-ranking bishop was spreading heterodox beliefs, petitioned to Pope Celestine to make Nestorius fall in line. Soon after, an ecumenical council was called by the emperor Theodosius II to hash out the disagreements.

St. Cyril had written a letter detailing the nature of Christ prior to the gathering at Ephesus, and it became a key document during the council.

Interestingly enough, Nestorius refused to attend the council. He had been waiting on several bishops that upheld Nestorianism, including John of Antioch, the patriarch of the city. However, when they did not show up after a few weeks of waiting, the council convened without them and Nestorius, fearing that he would be dominated by the other bishops, did not attend.

Without Nestorius and his comrades, the council vote was unanimous, officially proclaiming Nestorius a heretic and deposing him as patriarch of Constantinople.

As a result of the council, the following anathemas were produced:

1. If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is God in truth, and therefore that the holy virgin is the mother of God (for she bore in a fleshly way the Word of God become flesh), let him be anathema.

2. If anyone does not confess that the Word from God the Father has been united by hypostasis with the flesh and is one Christ with his own flesh, and is therefore God and man together, let him be anathema.

3. If anyone divides in the one Christ the hypostases after the union, joining them only by a conjunction of dignity or authority or power, and not rather by a coming together in a union by nature, let him be anathema.

4. If anyone distributes between the two persons or hypostases the expressions used either in the gospels or in the apostolic writings, whether they are used by the holy writers of Christ or by him about himself, and ascribes some to him as to a man, thought of separately from the Word from God, and others, as befitting God, to him as to the Word from God the Father, let him be anathema.

5. If anyone dares to say that Christ was a God-bearing man and not rather God in truth, being by nature one Son, even as "the Word became flesh", and is made partaker of blood and flesh precisely like us, let him be anathema.

6. If anyone says that the Word from God the Father was the God or master of Christ, and does not rather confess the same both God and man, the Word having become flesh, according to the scriptures, let him be anathema.

7. If anyone says that as man Jesus was activated by the Word of God and was clothed with the glory of the Only-begotten, as a being separate from him, let him be anathema.

8. If anyone dares to say that the man who was assumed ought to be worshipped and glorified together with the divine Word and be called God along with him, while being separate from him, (for the addition of "with" must always compel us to think in this way), and will not rather worship Emmanuel with one veneration and send up to him one doxology, even as "the Word became flesh", let him be anathema.

9. If anyone says that the one Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Spirit, as making use of an alien power that worked through him and as having received from him the power to master unclean spirits and to work divine wonders among people, and does not rather say that it was his own proper Spirit through whom he worked the divine wonders, let him be anathema.

10. The divine scripture says Christ became "the high priest and apostle of our confession"; he offered himself to God the Father in an odor of sweetness for our sake. If anyone, therefore, says that it was not the very Word from God who became our high priest and apostle, when he became flesh and a man like us, but as it were another who was separate from him, in particular a man from a woman, or if anyone says that he offered the sacrifice also for himself and not rather for us alone (for he who knew no sin needed no offering), let him be anathema.

11. If anyone does not confess that the flesh of the Lord is life-giving and belongs to the Word from God the Father, but maintains that it belongs to another besides him, united with him in dignity or as enjoying a mere divine indwelling, and is not rather life-giving, as we said, since it became the flesh belonging to the Word who has power to bring all things to life, let him be anathema.

12. If anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh and was crucified in the flesh and tasted death in the flesh and became the first born of the dead, although as God he is life and life-giving, let him be anathema.

It would seem like these thorough explanations would be enough to resolve all disputes right?

Wrong.

Just a few decades later, a monk from Constantinople named Eutyches began to spread monophysitism—the idea that Christ had one nature, as His divine nature seemingly “swallowed” His human nature.

Because Cyril’s anathemas emphasize the impossibility of separating Christ into two persons, some took the concept of unity and went too far, believing that the unity of natures meant there could only be one.

Using both the 12 anathemas of St. Cyril and a letter from Pope Leo I called Leo’s Tome, the council swiftly condemned the heresy and Christian orthodoxy was upheld.

Unlike Arianism, which essentially disappeared (unless one wants to argue JW’s are modern day Arians), both councils led to schisms and the establishment of new churches, with the Assyrian Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox Church respectively forming. The only difference between the two is that the Oriental Church upholds miaphysitism, or Christ being fully God and fully human yet only having one nature.

Now, with all of this being said, some may ask themselves: all of these minute details about Christ’s nature…do they really matter? Can’t I just accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior?

The answer is yes, it matters.

Many Christians today surprisingly don’t have a good grasp on the nature of Christ. One example is a poll from a few years ago that displayed that 73% of Evangelical Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the first and greatest being created by God.

To say this is surprising is an understatement, as this echoes a sentiment that is closer to the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses than Trinitarian Christians.

In fairness, the population statistic is likely much lower than this and the framing of the question could have been clearer. If the question was rephrased as “Is Jesus Christ fully God and fully man?” the results would have been much different.

But again, it is a Christian’s duty to understand a creation of God cannot be eternal, and thus divine.

When it comes to Christology, having inaccurate theology is not just believing something that isn’t true but, distorting the message of the Gospel.

For instance, if one clings to Arian beliefs and rejects Christ’s divine nature, the entirety of the Gospel doesn’t make sense.

The core Christian belief is that God Himself came down to the Earth to take on human flesh to reconcile the world to Him out of pure mercy, love, and forgiveness. Because of this, it is only fitting that human and divine nature become perfectly united, representing the reunion between God and man made possible through Christ’s sacrifice.

Only God can reconcile the world to Himself, so if a mere human sacrificed himself for us, it’s clear that the salvific effects cannot be infinite and would thus be inadequate.

Also, if Christ isn’t God in the flesh, then Thomas—along with the rest of us—would immediately become idolaters, as he proclaims Christ to be God in John 20:28.

Similarly, if you believe that His divine nature assumes His human nature like monophysitism, one can reasonably conclude that Christ did not actually suffer for our sake. Because his divine nature is not capable of experiencing suffering, this means the passion and death of Christ was a mere show, which weakens the strength of the Gospel.

Also, the council of Ephesus is still relevant because many contemporary Christians are extremely hesitant to give Mary the Theotokos title that she rightly deserves.

After all, once you say out loud that Mary is indeed the mother of God, then all of a sudden, all of the “loony” Catholic Marian dogmas actually aren’t as crazy. In fact, it is almost implicit that she will likely be set apart or be granted special privileges, for this is a title and role that literally no one else in the entire human history has taken on.

While many may take the “how can Mary be the mother of God if God existed before her?” route, the equation of how to break this down is actually a lot simpler than people think.

A few questions need to be asked.

Is Jesus Christ one Person, both fully God and fully man? If so, how is it possible for Mary to give birth to only Christ the human and not Christ the divine without separating Him into two persons?

It is, of course, not possible.

And yes, Mary is obviously not the origin of God but rather the woman who gave birth to the eternal being that took on human nature once entering the womb. Again, since His human and divine nature form the hypostatic union and cannot be separated in any way, she is indeed the Theotokos.

While there are of course many Christians who still deny her this title, many are coming around to reality.

One of those Christians was Charlie Kirk, who, just a few months before his tragic death, admitted that many Protestants don’t venerate her enough and the antidote to feminism was to imitate the Virgin Mother.

May his soul rest in perfect peace.

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