Jesus as Man: A Survey of Church History with W. Robert Godfrey

GODFREY: In our last session together we looked at the way in which the church wrestled to understand exactly how to talk about Jesus as divine, and we saw how, through a really pretty intense struggle, both theologically and we might say politically, the church really did manage to come and capture what the Scriptures, at least what I believe the Scriptures teach about the divinity of Jesus. But out of that struggle the church came so to stress the divinity of Jesus, so to hold that up as critical, and of course it is critical, that it did then, in the minds of some raise the question, "So then how do we understand His humanity?" Remember a couple of lectures ago we talked about part of the reason that Mary became such a center of devotion for some Christians in the late ancient and in the medieval period was because in part Christians didn't seem really to grasp that Jesus was truly human.

And so Mary became the human one who could sympathize, who could understand, and it reflected the danger of in some sense dehumanizing Jesus. And so the church began to wrestle with this question -- how can it be that Jesus is human, fully human, as well as being fully divine? And again, you see, there were a lot of ways to go wrong. It seems so true in the history of the church, as a friend of mine used to say, "Being an orthodox Christian means you walk a tightrope, and when you're on a tightrope there are two ways to fall off. You can get it wrong in two different ways. You can fall in two different directions." And probably in theology we would say you can fall in more than two directions. There are lots of ways to get it wrong, so the church was wrestling with this question, "How do we understand the humanity in relation to the divinity of Christ?" And one theologian said, "Well, it's really kind of simple. Jesus is part divine and part human. There's a human part and a divine part." Well, that's simple, but it's not satisfactory. Then you really have a Jesus who isn't quite divine and isn't quite human. He's, as the Latin theologians used to say, a tertium quid -- he's a third thing, and we don't want a third thing, we want a Jesus who is both fully divine and fully human. And so the church began to try to wrestle

with this, the church tried to think this through. And along came a theologian who thought he could help the church in this discussion, a man by the name of Nestorius. Now Nestorius seemed to be a rather successful churchman. He became patriarch of Constantinople. The bishops of these big, important churches -- Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria -- took on gradually the name patriarch, father ruler is sort of what patriarch means, and so they were bishops, that really was their basic title, but because of their role, their importance, the importance of their city, they began to be known as patriarchs. And there is still a patriarch in Constantinople, and he's still regarded as the first among equals amongst the patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox churches. And so Nestorius was the Patriarch of Constantinople.

By the way -- this is completely unrelated, but you'll want to know this -- the title pope is actually simply derived from the Latin papa -- meaning father. So the title pope by itself is not a title of great exaltation, and there were actually other bishops in the ancient church that had the title pope. So by itself it doesn't establish anything particular about his office, and the pope, too, his fundamental office is bishop of Rome. He continues to be the bishop of Rome, and it's from that title that he claims other powers in the life of the church. I've often thought if I were ever introduced to the pope, what would I call him? This really is off the track, because I don't think we should call him "Holy Father", only God is Holy Father. I don't think we should call him "His Holiness," because only God is truly holy. I think we could call him "Pope" but that might be a bit abrupt, "How are you, Mr. Pope?

The title I think we as Protestants ought always to use is Pontifex Maximus. That's a title he proudly bears, it's usually translated into English as Supreme Pontiff. You've heard him referred to as the Pontiff, the Supreme Pontiff? That's a title we can use with a clearer conscience because that's a pagan title. That was the title of the supreme pagan priest in Rome, and so this -- I'm going to get in trouble now -- but this is a good title for the pope, and so when you -- you can seem very respectful when you meet him and call him "Pontifex Maximus." All right -- off the track -- back on track. Nestorius is Patriarch of Constantinople, and Nestorius wants to defend the entire divinity of Christ, and he wants to defend the entire humanity of Christ and so he begins talking as if there are two persons in the body of Jesus -- a human person and a divine person, and that they are united just in a sort of common action, a common will -- not that they have a single will, but that they're united by a common purpose. Now that's the accusation against Nestorius -- that he ends up with two persons in Jesus. Whether he actually ever said that, or said it clearly is debatable.

I used to ask on an exam, "Was Nestorius a Nestorian?" And you can kind of argue that both ways -- it's the kind of question students like, there's no wrong answer, you can -- Nestorius was very sincere, he was very honest, he was very eloquent as a preacher, he was very zealous for orthodoxy, the only thing he lacked was he didn't really have very good theological judgment -- that's kind of a weakness in a theologian. And so he opened himself up to criticism for this failure really to see how Jesus could be one person, because what comes across in Scripture isn't -- Jesus isn't two persons in a body, He's really one person. And Nestorius came to be very much attacked then by the Patriarch of Alexandria, a man by the name of Cyril. Now here's where some of the ugly side of church life comes out.

Nestorius is Patriarch of Constantinople. From Cyril's point of view in Alexandria, Constantinople is a sort of Johnny-come-lately city, but it's now become the capital of the empire. It's called the New Rome, and it's really become the most important city in the empire. And so Cyril is jealous of Nestorius, he's jealous that Constantinople is beginning to overshadow Alexandria, in terms of being the most important Patriarch. And so Cyril is looking for a reason to bring Nestorius down, and in this issue of trying to talk about two persons in Christ, Cyril thinks he has found his -- Nestorius's -- Achilles heel. One historian put it that Cyril was learned, energetic, ambitious, and proud. Not a good combination, either, in a Patriarch. And so we begin to have this kind of warring tension where Cyril is insistent that we have to see Jesus as one single person, and any confusion of that on the part of Nestorius is intolerable. And that's what Cyril begins to argue, and lo and behold, they conclude they need another ecumenical council to try to deal with this. And the third ecumenical council then is held in Ephesus in 431. So

we've had a council in 325, we've had a council in 381, and now we have a council in 3 -- in 431 at Ephesus. And Nestorius should have known that holding the council in Ephesus was going to be to his great disadvantage. Even though Ephesus was in Asia Minor, and therefore relatively close to Constantinople, it had become a great center of devotion to the Virgin Mary. And it's very interesting that Ephesus in pagan days had been a great center of devotion to Artemis, the goddess. And as pagans have been coming into the church for a century after the conversion of the emperors, they have brought with them in my judgment a lot of these pagan attitudes, and so there's great devotion to the Virgin Mary in Ephesus, and Nestorius has offended these people, because Mary had been given the title of theotokos -- the cameramen love it when I write in Greek on the board, so I do it just for them -- theotokos, which literally means "the bearer of God," and that title for Mary is often translated

into English as "Mother of God." Have you ever heard that title for Mary, that she's the mother of God? Strictly speaking it's not a bad title, because the baby that she bore was divine. Theotokos doesn't teach that Mary was the source of His divinity; just that the child she bore was divine. Well, Nestorius came along and he said, "Well, you know that title's a little vague, a little uncertain, we really ought to say that Mary is christotokos, the bearer of Christ. Now of course Nestorius is right, there's certainly nothing wrong with the title christotokos -- that she bore the Christ -- but this was viewed by many people in Ephesus and other places as an effort to demote Mary, and to reduce her importance, and to eliminate her centrality in Christian religions. So it meant lots of people in Ephesus were out to get Nestorius, they were mad at him. Not just on this issue of was Christ two persons, but on this broader issue now of what is he doing to their piety and to the way they understand truth. In any case, after a lot of fussing, and feuding, and competing groups at the council, the council took a stand against Nestorius.

He was deposed, he was condemned, and the church was for a time fractured. It was a very sad moment in a sense. Nestorius we could say in some ways deserved it, he had caused a lot of trouble, he had brought a lot of grief on himself, he hadn't been very clear theologically, but he probably was more mistreated than he really deserved, and the church was really shaken. There was real alienation between some of Nestorius's followers and some who had followed Cyril, and it wasn't solved in 431; tensions continued. But although poor Nestorius was abandoned in the process, leaders of the church came together afterwards, and in 433 came up with a compromise statement that they hoped would reunite the church, and to some extent did. And the compromise statement was: "We understand Jesus to be one person with two natures," one person with two natures. "He is united as a single person with a fully divine nature and a fully human nature." And this would ultimately be the way forward for the church; this is the great compromise that would finally be accepted at the great fourth ecumenical council at Chalcedon in 451.

So this is a very important moment in the life of the church. It's interesting how the language has shifted. On the Trinity we say, "One nature with three persons," and with Christology we say, "One person with two natures." But it's really pretty clear what they want to say with the two natures is, "Everything that is essential to being God Jesus possesses. And everything essential to being human Jesus possesses. He is not deficient in His divinity in any way, He is fully God, and He is not deficient in His humanity in any way, He is fully human." And that is so critical if we are to understand not only the person of Jesus but also His work. Jesus has to be fully human to be a substitute for humans. Jesus cannot be a savior of humans if He isn't human. He has to take our nature upon Himself in order to be our Savior. And the church sensed that, the church understood that -- that He needed to be one with us to really be a substitute and a sacrifice for us. So sometimes you know we look back and we say, "All this debate about the Trinity, all this debate about Christology -- the person of Christ -- does it really matter?" Yes, it really matters, it really matters, not

only in understanding who He is, but it really matters in understanding what He does. Because if He's not fully divine, the later theologians would rightly say, He cannot bear the infinite wrath of God against sin. But if He's not fully human, He can't really owe the debt that has to be paid by humans, and so He has to be both things to accomplish redemption for us. It's particularly Anselm, the great medieval theologian who wrote about that in his famous treatise, "Cur Deus Homo" -- "Why the God-Man" or "Why Did God Become Man?" Well, because only God could save, but He had to save as a human because only humanity owed the debt. And so these things really are critical to our understanding of our redemption. After Nestorius was condemned, there arose then a kind of radical offshoot of Cyril's point of view that said, "Jesus is not only one person, but He's only one nature." And this point of view came to be known as the monophysite point of view -- from the Greek again, mono for one, and physis meaning nature. He is one person with one nature. These people so reacted against Nestorius

that they said, "We don't want any duality in Jesus, we want Him to be absolutely united, we want Him to be one single thing, that's crucial." The danger of the monophysite position is that again, the humanity begins to be kind of lost in the divinity. The stress falls so much on the divinity that it seems to some extent the humanity is being lost, and if we had more time we could talk about this more, but you'll have to trust me on this. This was a tendency then where once again the true humanity of Jesus was being undermined. But this was very attractive in certain parts of the empire. It was very attractive in Alexandria, and in Egypt; it was very attractive to some in Armenia, and in a real sense, even though Chalcedon in 451 settled the issue for most Christians in the ancient church and ever since, so that all Eastern Orthodox, all Roman Catholics, all orthodox Protestants accept the decision of Chalcedon, that Jesus is one person with two natures, there were groups that didn't accept it. Particularly in Egypt, was probably the strongest center of resisters, and tragically this meant that Egypt was a little welcoming to Islam when it came because

it freed them from the yoke of Chalcedon and of the Patriarch of Constantinople. They didn't become Muslims, the Egyptians, the majority remained Christian for four hundred years after Islam came to Egypt, but their monophysite tendencies meant they were sort of glad to be rid of the Romans when the Muslims arrived. I think they changed their mind later, but initially it really complicated life -- political life -- in the empire. Again as a footnote, there are eight million Christians still in Egypt descended from these folks, still there today. You know we read Egypt is ninety percent Muslim -- that's a lot of people -- but the ten percent is eight million people who are Christians still descended from these ancient church days in Egypt, so it's interesting how the history of these things continues on and on to influence the modern world in a variety of ways.

So, the church has come now to this recognition of who Jesus really is in relation to God and in relation to man, and it's crucial because it establishes that He is divine, and understands us fully, and is human, and He can be our Savior fully. Because it's in His death on the cross, it's in His body and blood that our redemption is made. It's in His human nature in the first place that our redemption is accomplished for us. And so this is so important, and it is ultimately a triumph of Biblical religion. Again, if you look at the Bible, the Bible may not tell us in technical terms exactly how we understand the relationship of the humanity and the divinity to Jesus, but when you look in the Bible, nothing can be clearer than that Jesus is divine, according to Biblical teaching, and that Jesus is human according to Biblical teaching. Jesus wept, Jesus was hungry, Jesus slept, Jesus died; He was a human, and that is so important to understanding who He was.

Now, I have a test for you. After this monophysite issue was sort of faced, a new issue came up that was called the monothelite controversy. Now I warned you that these technical words are just designed to keep theologians employed, so that someone has to be able to define them for you. And this is the question, this is the debate that the monothelites raised: How many wills does Jesus have? Does Jesus have one will -- that's what this means -- monothelite, one will, or were the diothelites correct that Jesus has two wills? Now you may be sitting there thinking, "I really don't care," and I can understand that reaction, but this is a kind of test, you see, and I'm always intrigued at seminary because I make students vote, no one can abstain, they have to vote. They're either monothelites or diothelites, and usually the diothelites are the majority. And it gives me a great opportunity to say, "You're a bunch of heretics." It's always important to put seminarians in their place and try to humble them. Diothelatism became orthodoxy because if Jesus doesn't have a divine will he's not

really fully divine, is He? Isn't a will an essential part of the nature of being divine? And if Jesus doesn't have a human will, then He's not really fully human, is He? And when He resists the temptation in the wilderness, if He only has a divine will, isn't it a lot easier to resist the temptation than if He really has to, like Adam, exercise a human will, be fully human, have to face the temptation and resist it? Now the two wills in Jesus never operate in contradiction to one another, in opposition to one another, they're always united in His person, but it's a way of testing whether we see that Jesus is fully human, to be fully human He has to have a human will. So as we come to the end here we see these are big issues that the ancient church had to wrestle with. It's not surprising it took decades and struggle for the ancient church to think it through. And for us now in retrospect it can seem kind of easy and kind of obvious, but what we really ought to feel is an immense amount of gratitude to the ancient church for having thought so carefully, so deeply, and so Biblically about these things. So we'll stop there for now.