Docetist understanding: Jesus is not Man
Ebionite understanding: Jesus is not God
Adoptionism: The Logos was not a divine person, but the power by which Jesus
became the adopted Son of God – Jesus is not considered here the natural Son of God.
It was accidental but not natural. This was put forth by modalists.
Arian understanding of Jesus (keep in mind that the Logos is not God himself). Arius
understood that Scripture claims human predicates are attributed to him in
scripture.
Soul
(taken
Human
up by
Body
the
Logos)
Thus:
 The Logos/flesh union must mean that the Logos suffered and died in his
divine nature
 Thus, the Logos could not be God because that would mean that the Father
changed in becoming human, suffered and died
 Further, since Christ had no human soul, he was not really human either.
 Thus, both the Logos and his humanity become a new third thing or tertium
quid.
Apollinaris:
 Was a huge supporter of Nicea, and, thus, was strictly opposed to the Arian
idea that the Son was not homoousios with the Father and Spirit.
 He also was opposed to any Christology that was adoptionist.
Soul
(taken
Human
up by
Body
the
Logos)
For Apollinaris:
 The soul is the life source of the body, and so the Logos was the
vitalization of the whole of the flesh
 Christ was a composite divine/human being —he was not human as we
are
So, Jesus was God, but his humanity was destroyed in the process. Likewise, this
mixing and composite nature necessarily would cause change in God himself. The
soul, for Apollinaris is not only the central principla of life, but is the primary center
of all human experience as well. So, the Logos, as God, hungers, thirsts, suffers, and
dies.
Jesus is, again, a third thing—only this time, unlike the Arians, God’s immutability is
lost as well.
But…if Jesus was truly God and truly man, how are we to
understand the union of the two?
Nestorius:
 Wanted to affirm that Christ was both truly God and truly man.
 He understood that the mixing and changing of the two natures in Arian and
Apollinarian Christologies was unacceptable and destroyed both Christ’
humanity and divinity.
 Thus he distinguished between the two natures in such a way that insisted
that there is no sense in which one could say “God suffered”, but only “Christ
suffered”, and Mary could not be called “mother of God”, but only “mother of
Christ”
Divine Nature
Human Nature
Christ
Divine Person
Human
Person
For Nestorius, Christ is not a person in and of himself, but a conglomeration of the
divine person and human person. Christ is the representation of the relation
between the divine and human person, but not a being himself. This is, in part, due
to the fact that he understood the divine and human persons of Christ to be in
existence before the incarnation. Thus, Nestorius was left with only a moral union
between the natures – there is no sense for him in which God became man because
became for him could only mean that God changed. Thus there was no true
incarnation.
It is only when one starts from the unified person of Christ as a being in and of
himself can one describe the union of the two in anything other than moral or
accidental terms
Eutyches and the Monophysites:
Christ is one nature from the two natures – again, we end up with a third thing.
Even so, we must maintain that Christ is one being from two natures.
This must hold true: the Logos must remain unchanged in the incarnation in
order to remain God and, thus also for us to say God became man. However,
the humanity must remain intact as well in order for it to be man that God
became.
So, what does it mean that God became man.
 Cyril of Alexandria helped spell this out for us and it later became defined in
Chalcedon.
 The union of divine and human natures did not bring about a new person,
but represents the same Son of God coming to exist as a full human being.
The nature of the Logos is not changed, but has come to take on a new mode
of existence. It is a personal and existential becoming. Through the
incarnation, God (as the immutable God) now exists as man.
 Christ had both a human body and human soul, so that though it is proper to
say that the Logos suffered and died, he did not do so according to his
immutable divinity, but according to his humanity. Again, however, we are
not talking about two people, but one. The Logos exists in two natures as
God and as man, but the Logos is always and only one person.
But back to the mystery: Where else in all the world is such a notion of “become”
also true?1
1
I took much of the explanations here from Weinandy’s Does God Change?