The God-Man Who Saves

The key definition of the 4th Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD concerning Jesus Christ is as follows: -

Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, distinctly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Prophets of old time have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, and as the Creed of the Fathers hath delivered to us.

In considering the achievements of the Council of Chalcedon, it is important to appreciate the underlying Christology—the significance of Jesus Christ for the Christian faith. Metropolitan Kallistos has given us a balanced reflection on the nature of Christ:

… Christ the Saviour must be both fully human and fully God. No one less than God can save humanity; therefore, if Christ is to save, He must be God. But only if He is truly human as we are, can we humans participate in what He has done for us. A bridge is formed between God and humanity by the Incarnate Christ who is divine and human at once……

Heresies concerning Christ are exposed by the Fourth Council and these may be classified as either denying the humanity of Christ (mainly the Monophysites) or the divinity of Christ (mainly the Nestorians).  The followers of Nestorius taught that there were two persons in Christ not one, thereby rejecting the Ever-Virgin Mary, Our Lady, as the Mother of God or Theotokos, saying only that she was the Mother of Christ (Christotokos); and before them, the Arians who taught that Christ was a semi-divine created being.  Let us explore some of these important heresies and how they may have influenced Islam.

1. Denying the humanity:  In this account, Christ is a Divine ‘Marble’ Colossus bestriding the earth, immune to the sufferings and corruption of both the Cosmos and humanity.  His death then is not a real death, a bloody death on the Cross; it is rather something quite different: an illusion, even a subterfuge.  As many traditions in Islam hold, He is spared even the semblance of such impossible indignity by swooning and being replaced by another.  This heresy did not originate in Islam.  It was claimed by gnostics, docetists and Manichaeans for 500 years or so before the rise of Islam; from whom it was probably borrowed by Muhammad.  The Monophysites who rejected the 4th Ecumenical Council also denied the full humanity of Christ, especially Eutyches never really accepted the possibility of any real suffering on the part of Christ; it was all for show, not a real struggle or a real pain.  So, when Muslims argue that if Jesus was God, as the Orthodox claim, he could not in principle have suffered death by crucifixion but only ascended, then the Monophysite rejection of Chalcedon seems to be the basis for most of this. Nonetheless, there is a subtlety here in that the basic Nestorian Christological sympathies of Islam (Jesus is a prophet, a man and not God) then take over to the extent that Muslims now suppose that have an extra argument against the divinity, namely: ‘God cannot die’ – or of course be born in the flesh!

2. Denying the divinity: As I have explained, the conviction of Islam that Christ is not God is clear for them on account of their assumption that no man can be God, which approximates to the heresy of Nestorius.  Undoubtedly, this alleged heinous error of the Orthodox (in their eyes) that God could be anything other than One rather than a Trinity of hypostases, (inexactly “persons”), lies at the root of their a priori denial of the Incarnation, Pentecost and the Trinity.  Their rejection of the crucifixion of Christ seems to be a simple horror that so significant a prophet could have experienced the humiliation of crucifixion.  He could only ‘deserve’ a natural death and then perhaps an ascension with, interestingly, a key role for Allah in the Final Judgement.  Muslims are by no means alone in making these assumptions concerning the incompatibility of monotheism (belief in one God) with the divinity of Christ and the Trinity.  Aside from all those heresies that took this position before the rise of Islam we have all those that have made the same assumptions subsequently.  What these heresies all share is not merely doctrinal differences but something much, much more important. 

Those who embrace this double set of heresies share one thing all in common.  Some (the deniers of His divinity) have never encountered Jesus Christ personally as their Lord and Saviour; saving as only God can save, commanding ultimate loyalty and obedience as only God can.  Accepting to be saved means both accepting our own sinfulness and also His capacity to forgive, transforming our lives as only God can. Others (the deniers of His humanity) have never encountered Jesus Christ personally as their brother in embracing the fullness of the human condition, including our desires, emotions, temptations, trials, sufferings, dying and death.  In this uniting indivisibly of our humanity from his Mother to His Single Personhood as the Divine Logos, Christ is indeed the same as us in all things except sin; albeit that He still accepts, out of love, the power of human sin to bring Him to his voluntary sacrifice on a bitter cross in order to transform our humanity in the Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecostal outpouring.  Only if a person experiences all these things will he or she have the possibility of embracing the Orthodox Catholic Faith in all its fullness.  This is why the 4th Ecumenical Council is so important.  It establishes in respect of the Person of Christ what the 1st and 2nd Councils taught: - Christ is our Lord and God and Saviour; AND our Brother, our Friend, our Joy, and our Man of Sorrows.  He is everything!

Amen!  Fr Gregory 19th July 2020