John of Damascus was living in the eighth century and was the Eastern Church’s last great theologian.1 By the time he came about, the Church, as a whole, had already discussed a great deal on the subject of Christ, his humanity and his deity. Before we go any further, however, we must be clear what exactly John of Damascus meant by saying that “There is one incarnate nature”. It is quite clear from reading further his work, The Orthodox Faith,2from which the quote is taken, that John of Damascus didn’t think that Christ had only one nature as we might understand nature. He affirms many times in his writing that Christ does indeed have two natures, divine and human.3
In fact, there are several people of this period, and of earlier periods, who spoke of one nature when what they actually meant in our terms was person. Further, Pope Leo made the mistake in taking the Greek word physis to equate to the Latin word natura and so condemned the Alexandrian mantra of one incarnate nature (physis) of the logos as a heretical statement of one person, whereas the Greek speaking world at the time used physis and hypostasisinterchangeably both to mean person.4 Since John of Damascus was of the Eastern and therefore Greek speaking Church, by using the word ‘nature’ as we have it translated here, it is clear that he meant it to mean person or being in that there is one incarnate person or being of God the Word and he is simply using nature here to reaffirm that mantra.
Louis Berkhof, in his History of Christian Doctrines lays out the four elements of the Christological debate as Christ’s deity, his humanity, the union therein as one person, and the distinction of humanity and deity within such union.5 There are clearly two balances at hand here: the balance of Christ’s full manhood and his full deity and the balance of the union of these two and the distinction of these two. Before John of Damascus, there had already been the Council of Chalcedon in year 451. This sought to resolve all the issues of the time, therefore tackling the first of these balances, and was a foundation for all further argument from that time and so laid out the issues of the second of these balances. The council stated:
Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.6
We shall now discuss these two balances successively, ourselves.
MANHOOD AND DEITY
The balance of Christ’s manhood and deity was one of the earlier discussions of the church. Two early heresies that had been defeated before Chalcedon were Docetism, that Christ only seemed or appeared to be human, and Appolinarianism, that Christ only took a human body and so wasn’t fully human.7 In the first, Christ wasn’t really a human but he only seemed to be a human. This was because Docetists believed that matter was evil and that that which is divine cannot undergo change or suffering, so they upheld that Christ could not undergo the change of being born into a material body. Followers of Appolinarianism only allowed Christ to partake of a human body and therefore not of a full human nature. These two heresies compromise Christ’s full humanity and so weren’t considered to be orthodox belief.
The basis for this refutation is as Robert Letham so succinctly puts it, “If Christ was not truly and fully man we could not be saved.”8 If Christ’s full human nature is denied, then in short, Christ was not a member of the human race and so could not have been a second Adam, could not have paid the price for human sin and so could not have been the saviour of humankind. Berkhof is helpful here too, “Since the whole sinner had to be renewed, Christ had to assume human nature in its entirety, and not simply the least important parts of it.”9
Another early heresy that was defeated was Arianism, that the Son was neither self-existent, nor eternal and that the Son was not equal with God.10 In doing so they lessen Christ to, at best, an enlightened human who may have had a particular status and knowledge granted to him. Calvin refutes any such view that demotes Christ’s deity saying, “The case was certainly desperate, if the Godhead itself did not descend to us, it being impossible for us to ascend.”11 If Christ was not a member of the Godhead, himself divine, then he could not be the way to the Godhead, he could not be God’s self revelation and the basis for salvation itself and indeed the Christian faith is compromised.
So it must be accepted that Christ is fully God and fully human. John of Damscus clearly states that Christ must have two natures, both human and divine.12 Again he says, “[Christ] is then wholly perfect God, but yet is not simply God: for he is not only God but also man. And he is also wholly perfect man but not simply man, for he is not only man but also God.”13 In other words, Christ is fully God but not only God and he is fully human but not only human because he is both fully man and fully God.
UNITY AND DISTINCTION
We now reach the 5th century, when the church had established that Christ had two natures, both manhood and deity, and it was now the question of how these two natures related and the nature of their union.14 Heresies such as Nestorianism were at the heart of the problem. The fault of Nestorianism was not in error of the natures of Christ but in the number of persons of Christ, in that it went so far as to speak not only of two natures but of two persons.15 Cyril, in defence of the orthodox position, stressed the unity of the two natures of Christ in the one person.16 Due to such defence, Nestorianism became recognised as a heresy, though it is true that Nestorius himself was only trying to defend the full human nature of Christ.17 Simply put, Nestorianism’s error was that it compromised Christ’s unity by speaking of two persons.
Around the same sort of time, an opposite heresy arose. Eutyches sought to defend the unity of Christ that Nestorius erroneously rejected. However, though claiming to uphold Christ’s full human nature, the way that he spoke of Christ’s unity meant that his deity swamped his humanity.18 In effect this rendered Christ as without a human nature. The distinction was compromised to such an extent that Christ was no longer two natures and therefore could not be fully human.
Chalcedon’s council of 451 aimed to sort out these errors, and its definition was such that it stops the possibility of unity going to the extent of one nature overcoming the other causing wrong distinction, but also protects the unity so that Christ is not seen as two separate natures to the extent of being two persons.19 But in spite of this, after Chalcedon more discussion was needed in other areas of Christ’s unity and distinction.
Very soon after Chalcedon, two men, both called Leontius, cleared much of the debris. Leontius of Byzantium put forward the idea of enhypostasia, where there is one being of Christ, the eternal Word, in whom are two natures, human and divine.20 Leontius of Jerusalem further proposes that theenhypostasia of Christ does not mean that his human nature nor divine nature have their own being but that each are real natures in one being, the human nature having been brought into that one being.21
Next came the battle for the wills. How many wills did Christ have and how did they act? The Monotheletists either saw that the human will was absorbed by the divine will and therefore that the divine will alone acted or that there was a composite fusion of the two wills and therefore that the one fused will acted.22 For Christ to only have one will was compromising either to his human will and therefore human nature or to the distinction of the two wills and therefore the existence of two natures. This was the issue at the time of John of Damascus though they were ultimately defeated and it was affirmed that since Christ had two natures, he also had two wills both working, as with his nature, in complete union and harmony.23 Ultimately, it was affirmed in the sixth ecumenical council, at Constantinople, that Christ did indeed have two wills acting in complete unity, but that the human will was subject to the divine and that such subjection and unity didn’t make the human will any less human but rather perfected and heightened it.24
Then came the discussion of the communication of attributes. The question was, to what extent are the characteristics of the human and the divine natures taken up by their counterpart natures? It was affirmed and accepted that the characteristics of both of the two natures where taken on by the one person and that in all Christ’s actions and experiences it is both the two natures that act and experience.25 However, the finality of this discussion wasn’t even reached in the reformation. One of the fundamental differences between Lutheranism and Calvinism was that Luther upheld that there was a giving of the divine attributes, such as omniscience, omnipotence and so on, to the human nature. Calvin disagreed; after all, if the communication of attributes is such that the divine attributes are given to the human nature then the human nature is effectively annulled.26 For Christ’s human nature to take on the divine incommunicable attributes then Christ could not have experienced full humanity, and therefore we come to the same position as those who deny Christ’s humanity, that Christ is unable to be the saviour of humankind.
What we can affirm, as Calvin affirmed, that “he who was the Son of God became the Son of man, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person”27
CONCLUSION
Throughout the history of the church there has been much discussion on these two balances. The aim has been to get the balance right between Christ’s manhood and deity and the balance between those two natures’ unity and distinction. It would seem that in many cases, the heretics were only trying to readdress a previous heresy, but in so doing they pushed the balance too far the other way.
The orthodox position is to have both balances set in the middle: Christ was fully God and fully man; his two natures were fully existent and therefore united within the one person but united so that they are distinct and that there are two natures within the one person. To go beyond this is to go into the realm of error and heresy, and to do so is to compromise, not only the Christian faith but also the very saving ability of Christ. And so we can affirm with John of Damascus (as he is rightly understood), “We confess that there is one incarnate nature of God the Word.”
ENDNOTES
1 Kenneth Scott Latourette. The First Five Centuries (vol. 1 of A History of the Expansion of Christianity; London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1938), 309.
2 John of Damascus. The Orthodox Faith, Book III (of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series. Vol IX, ed. P. Schaff; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989).
3 John, Orthodox, 46, 49 & 52.
4 Robert Letham. Through Western Eyes. (Fearn: Mentor, 2007), 49.
5 Louis Berkhof. The History of Christian Doctrine (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 102.
6 Council of Chalcedon, 451, n.p. (Cited 16th November 2007, Online: http://www.reformed.org/documents/chalcedon.html).
7 Donald Macleod. The Person of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1998), 157-160.
8 Letham, Western, 45.
9 Berkhof, History, 103.
10 Macleod, Person, 122.
11 John Calvin. Institutes of Christian Religion, 2:12 (trans. unknown; repr., Mac Dill AFB, Fl.: Macdonald Publishing Company, no date), 240.
12 John, Orthodox, 46.
13 John, Orthodox, 52.
14 Macleod, Person, 181.
15 Berkhof, History, 104-105.
16 Berkhof, History, 105.
17 Letham, Western, 40.
18 Letham, Western, 45.
19 Letham, Western, 48.
20 Letham, Western, 60.
21 Letham, Western, 61.
22 Berkhof, History, 109.
23 Letham, Western, 72.
24 Berkhof, History, 110.
25 Macleod, Person, 194-195.
26 Macleod, Person, 197-198.
27 Calvin. Institutes, 2:14, 240.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berkhof, Louis. The History of Christian Doctrine. Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1969.
Calvin, John. Institutes of Christian Religion, 2:12. Translator unknown, Mac Dill AFB, Fl.: Macdonald Publishing Company, no date.
Latourette, Kenneth Scott. The First Five Centuries. vol. 1 of A History of the Expansion of Christianity. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1938.
Letham, Robert. Through Western Eyes. Fearn: Mentor, 2007.
John of Damascus. The Orthodox Faith, Book III of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series. Vol IX, ed. P. Schaff; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989.
Macleod, Donald. The Person of Christ. Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1998.
