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PART I
A Biblical Reply
Only a few answers
Who is Jesus Christ? There are only a few answers open to the
question. Historically, given the claims of Christ's Church that Jesus
is divine, the response to the question "Who is Jesus?" was
and is one of several! 1) He was a man, a good man, a holy man, a man in
whom God was at work—but,
nonetheless, a man. This would include the option that Jesus was the
Messiah, a liberator of Israel, a prophetic figure—but
not divine. 2) He was a special creation of God—a
being better than any human could ever be—an
intermediary being between God and man. 3) He was God who took on the
appearance of a man so as to seem to be one of us. Yet in this phantom
state Jesus was really only an apparition—a
type of ghost. 4) He is the incarnate Son of God, God from God, Light
from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being
with the Father.
With one of these four choices have men and women answered the
perennial query "Who is Jesus Christ?" The question is
important because it grows out of an interest in Jesus that can bring
one to the verge of faith. On the answer, however, depends much more
than individual faith. It involves the Church's whole concept of
redemption and the salvation of all men and women.
The question and its answer come from a matrix of faith. Eventually,
the correct answer can only be the result of a response in faith. For
this reason it is in the living faith community—the
Church—that we must look for the
answer.
The Church's reply
The Church offers a very clear answer. Jesus Christ is the Son of
God, true God and true man. (D. 125). The Church also teaches that this
answer is the same as that given by the Apostles and first disciples.
However the Church also recognizes that her faith developed and that the
wording of this perennial answer had become more clear or precise in the
course of history.
We are interested here in looking at this question and answer
sequence to see how various answers can be made that proclaim Christ in
terms acceptable to the Church's faith in him as the incarnate Son of
God, and how other answers fall short of this faith. Yet even a wrong
answer has the value of helping the Church see more clearly the correct
one by adding another dimension to it. In fact the lucidity that
surrounds the present day faith proclamation of who Jesus is, in no
small part is the result of the surfacing of wrong answers to the all
important question.
Given the nature of the Now Testament writings we can expect to find
in them the truth about Jesus. Yet this truth may not always be in the
form and words to which we are accustomed. Thus to take only the literal
meaning of the words—the various
voices—in the New Testament and
dehydrate them by boiling off the living tradition of the Church is to
produce a shriveled, dry, and altered product. But even more disastrous,
it is to come up with answers which, though seemingly supported by
certain citations, are, in fact, wrong ones.
In like manner since many currents, influences and cultural emphases
were at work in the wording of Sacred Scripture, it is not impossible
that incorrect interpretations of those words could, did, and can today
abound.
And even if we assume that the correct answer has undergone
development and been made more explicit, we do so knowing that
essentially the Church's answer today is that of the Apostolic
community.
For this assumption is also part of the Church's faith. This is the
reason that we begin our study of the question "Who is Jesus
Christ?" with a look at the original reply of the Apostolic Church.
At first, the choice seems to have been confined to the rejection or
acclamation of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah. The faith statements
made about Jesus and recorded in the New Testament as made before his
death, centered on his being the Messiah. It was only after his
resurrection that Jesus was understood by his followers to be the
Christ, the Lord, who, as such, was also the Son of God.
New Testament record
The books of the New Testament record a gradual development in the
disciples' recognition of who Jesus was and is. Yet within the New
Testament, Jesus is explicitly called God. This statement is challenged
by some scholars today. Yet there seems to be an enormous amount of
evidence to sustain that such an explicit declaration of Jesus' divinity
is part of the gospel. The teaching tradition of the Church does see in
certain terms and names used in reference to Jesus a direct proclamation
of him as God. For example, in the prologue of the Gospel of St John,
Jesus is identified as the Word of God, a Person who was "in the
beginning with the Father". That Gospel proclaims "the Word
was God". (John 1:1).
Jesus is also called the "Son" who "bears the very
stamp of God's nature" (Heb 1:3). And in the exclamation of St
Thomas, recorded in John's gospel, Jesus is addressed as "My Lord
and My God!" (20:28). By the sixth century the Church explicitly
accepted this as an affirmation of his divinity. The Second Council of
Constantinople in 553 said that Christ in this passage is being called
God (D. 43).
More often, however, the title "Lord" is given to Jesus.
The Risen Jesus is called Lord in recognition of his divine glory (Phil
2:10-11). The acclamation "Lord Jesus!" of the early Christian
Community points to the Church's conviction that Jesus is with his
people. This is the Christian paraphrase of the Old Testament address to
God as Emmanuel, God-with-us. Jesus now bears this divine name. He is
the Lord, our Lord with us. The proclamation is of the essence of the
Apostolic preaching of which so many examples are found in the Acts of
the Apostles. It is this affirmation that is developed in St Paul and St
John to release some of its full implication.
The Gospel of St John does not hesitate to put on the lips of Jesus
himself the name proper to God. In the book of Exodus, Moses asked God
for his name. "God said to Moses", Exodus continues, "'I
AM WHO I AM'. And he said, 'Say this to the people of Israel, I AM has
sent me to you’" (Exodus 3:14). In St John's Gospel Jesus applies
this name to himself. "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham
was, I am" (John 8:58). The response of some who heard him was
violent. "They took up stones to throw at him" (8:59). This
they were to do again later on when Jesus said "I and the Father
are one" (John 10:30). Jesus at that time asked the crowd why they
would stone him. They seemed to have got the point of Jesus' declaration
without benefit of further reflection, for the gospel continues,
"The Jews answered him, 'We stone you for no good work but for
blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God’" (John
10:33).
The Gospels according to Matthew and Mark trace the dimensions of the
question and answer in terms of a conversation between Jesus and Peter
with some other disciples. It is Jesus who raises the question "Who
do men say that the Son of man is?" (Matt 16:13). In Mark,
presumably the earlier of these two accounts of the same event, the
question is more direct. "Who do men say that I am?" (Mark
8:27).
The structure of both accounts is the same. The setting is Caesarea
Philippi. Jesus first asks his disciples who others say he is. He then
challenges these same followers to declare who they say he is. Peter
answers, apparently for all, "You are the Christ, the Son of the
living God" (Matt 16:16). In Mark's account Peter is quoted as
replying "You are the Christ" (Mark 8:29). The Matthew account
has Jesus' confirmation of Peter's profession of faith. "And Jesus
answered him, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has
not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven’"
(16:17).
The Matthew account of Peter's profession takes us beyond that of
Mark's. For the strictly literal interpretation of "You are the
Christ" can mean merely a reference to Jesus' Messiahship which
does not necessarily mean divinity. The additional title, "The Son
of the living God", goes beyond the confession of kingship and
shows a more developed understanding of who Jesus is. The primitive
Christian community as reflected here professed their belief in the
entirely unique relationship of Jesus with the Father. There is no
reason, given the other professions in Christ's divinity found in the
literature of the primitive Church, automatically to exclude that this
is a profession of divinity—a
proclamation of the faith—intuition
of the ancient Christian community.
Jesus the Messiah
The special relationship of Jesus to the Father is the essence of the
revelation of the New Testament. Jesus is the Son. The whole thrust of
this revelation came to be summed up in what we now call binitarian
(Father and Son) or trinitarian (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) formulae.
In the New Testament there are several faith formulae that indicate an
effort to conserve in concise phrases the essential elements of the
faith. One of the most remarkable of these is found in 1 Cor 15:3 ff.
where St Paul reproduces an extract from what he describes as "the
gospel which I preached to you and which you received". This
gospel, Paul points out, is what he himself received, presumably from
the Church. Other such creedal formulae are found in Rom 8:24, 2 Tim
2:8, 1 Pet 3:18 and a most clear one is found in 1 Cor 8:6: "We,
however, have one God the Father, from whom are all things and for whom
we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and
through whom we exist".
From Corinthians
The two most regularly cited trinitarian formulae are found in 2 Cor
13:14: "The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all", and the
baptismal command put by St Matthew on the lips of the risen Lord,
"Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt 28:19). Second
Corinthians is usually dated around 57 A.D., the Gospel of Matthew about
75 A.D.
It seems from the ease with which the first believers move from
"Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah" to "Jesus is the Son
of God", to Jesus is "My Lord and My God", that the faith
experience of the Church included Jesus' divinity.
In this sense the later tenacity with which the Church held to
Christ's divinity makes sense. The Church seems to have equated the
proclamation of Jesus as the Christ and Lord with the confession of
Jesus as true God.
PART II
The Apostolic Church’s Reply
As the Church moved out of the age which saw the Apostles themselves
bearing witness to the words of Jesus she carefully preserved her
memories of what he said and did. And in the heritage so jealously
preserved by the second generation Church we find the formulae that
invoked the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There are numerous example of
this statement of faith in God One in Three. The same faith is also
reflected in the liturgical rites of that day as they are recorded and
can be pieced together. The Didache, usually dated at the beginning of
the second century (and therefore, within the lifetime of disciples of
the Apostles), gives the unmistakable directions for the administration
of baptism: "After you have said all these things, baptize in
running water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit." (no. 7). Clement, in his Letter to the Corinthians,
usually dated around 90-95 A.D., brings out a similar formula when he
enquires of his readers, "Have we not one God, and one Christ and
one Spirit of grace which has been poured out on us?" (no. 46. 5).
The letters of St Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom in Rome about 107,
reveal several trinitarian creedal statements. In his letter to the
Magnesians, he exhorts the faithful to live "in faith and charity,
in the Son and the Father and the Spirit", and later in the same
letter he reminds them to be obedient to the bishop and one another as
"the apostles to Christ and to the Father and to the Spirit"
(no. 13).
As the Apostolic era fades into the next generation of
believers and into the age of Justin and his Apology we find
still additional formulations of the creed of the Church. Here, for
example, we find the trinitarian formulae, "To the Father of the
universe, through the name of his Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Apol.
I, 65, 3) and "the Maker of all things, through his Son Jesus
Christ, and through the Holy Spirit" (Apol. I, 67, 2).
Gradual clarification
It must have been the continuity with the Apostolic faith of these
creedal statements and the constant repetition of them that led Newman
to comment that an examination of a chain of pre-Arian writers, from
every part of the Christian world, reveals that "there was during
the second and third centuries a profession and teaching concerning the
Holy Trinity, not vague and cloudy, but of a certain determinate
character" (Cardinal Newman, Causes of the Rise and Successes of
Arianism, ch. 3, no. 1). Newman continues, "some doctrine or
other of a Trinity lies at the very root of the Christian conception of
the Supreme Being and of his worship and service" (Newman, ch. 3,
no. 1),
What took place from the days of the Apostolic Church down to the
Council of Nicaea (325) might be described as a gradual unspecified
clarification of the implications dependent on the Church's faith
proclamation. The process began with the faith as something given, which
is to be reverenced and understood insofar as reason can penetrate the
mystery of God's revelation. The process moves from what is given to
what is implied. The affirmation of further statements about the faith
enable the living faith to develop. It flourishes yet does not change.
It grows but is not altered.
Whose Son is He?
To the Council of Nicaea, the gradual, or not so slow process
depending on what you consider fast, clarification of the faith
continued. There were several aberrations which we shall look at
briefly. These elements, alien to the true faith, were soon recognized
as such and declared not in keeping with the true faith. Usually these
were localized theological, philosophical, or exegetical positions which
tended to view the faith from a favoured premise. This in turn put out
of focus other aspects of the faith. In answer to the question
"What think you of the Christ? Whose Son is he?", several
answers came to be voiced that were not in harmony with the Church's
proclamation. The first of these erroneous positions is called Docetism.
The Docetists contested the truth of the new faith by claiming that
Christ had never been truly human. These people felt that to preserve
the divinity of Jesus it was necessary to deny his humanity. They,
therefore, maintained that the figure of Jesus was really only a
phantasm, a false human, a sort of ghostlike being who only seemed to be
a man. The Greek word for "seem" gives this group its name,
Docetists. Apparently, this false conception of who Jesus was dates back
almost to the beginning of the Church. For in the First and Second
Letters of St John we find what many scholars see as a refutation of the
Docetist teaching. The First Letter opens with an affirmation that the
Lord who "was from the beginning was also corporeal... which we
have heard, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands"
(I John 1:1). It later warns against the "many false prophets"
(4:1). In the Second Letter we are told that "many deceivers have
gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of
Jesus Christ in the flesh..." (2 John 7).
Another wrong answer
St Ignatius of Antioch, as he made his way to his death in Rome in
107, writes to the Trallians that "some atheists, that is,
unbelievers, say his suffering was but make-believe... Avoid these
wildlings…" (Letter to the Trallians, 10-11). He states the
correct faith in his letter to the Ephesians, "Our God Jesus Christ
was brought to birth by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary, of David's
seed, according to God's great plan for men" (Epistle to the
Epbesians, 18, 2).
The next wrong answer to the question "Who is Jesus?" came
from a group known collectively as Gnostics. They got the name from the
Greek word for knowledge. The name followed on the fact that they
claimed they had the "true story" about Jesus and that their
knowledge was quite superior to that of the ordinary, uninformed
believer.
Gnosticism is a view of life that borrows heavily from Platonic
philosophical conclusions. It is also highly seasoned with the Eastern
(Asia Minor and Persia) mystery religions. The essence of the gnostic
doctrine is its claim to possess a secret knowledge principle that gives
members a deeper insight into the Christian revelation. This
"insight" is, of course, a higher "truth" than that
held by the rest of Christians.
Applied lock, stock and barrel to the Christian revelation the God of
creation became the one divine being. The Word of God, Jesus Christ,
became the great emanation from the Father, the Demiurge. Men and women
were divided into those who shared the "secret knowledge" that
was the Word, and all the rest.
Gnostic movement
According to this theory God—the
one supreme being—could not have
been involved in the elements of this corruptible world. The ideal does
not get mixed up in earthly shadows and material likenesses. So the
conclusion that their philosophical and theological studies arrived at
was quite simply—Jesus Christ is
not God in the sense of "equal to the Father" nor is he man in
the flesh as are other human beings. Jesus is a man, according to this
theory, and Christ is the superhuman emanation from the Divine Being.
Jesus is not the Christ. It is only correct to say that the superhuman
Christ invested or used the human Jesus.
At first the Church did not everywhere react strongly against the
gnostic movement. For there is a sense in which the philosophy of the
Platonic and later Neoplatonic school could be useful in understanding
who Jesus is. Later theology was to derive much from these currents of
thought to express how it is that the Father and Son, both God, could be
both distinct persons and yet one divinity.
But the day dawned when the Gnostics insisted that their
philosophical conclusions take precedence over the faith commitment of
the Christian community. Then the battle lines were drawn up, for there
are too many aspects of the faith in Jesus Christ that cannot be made to
reconcile with the rather narrow tailoring of the gnostic suit made for
him.
St Irenaeus as a boy had received the faith from St Polycarp.
Sometime around 178 he became Bishop of Lyons in present day France.
Before his death in 200 he wrote in defence of the Catholic faith as
received, over and against the Gnostics' view of things. His great work Against
Heresies is a detailed attack on Gnosticism. Irenaeus understood
that the key concept for the true faith was the incarnation of Jesus
Christ. The Eternal Word of God was equal to the Father and became man—took
on flesh. Jesus Christ is therefore true God and true man.
Irenaeus wrote: "It is not true that Christ then (at the time of
the baptism) descended on Jesus. Nor is it true that Christ and Jesus
are two distinct persons; but the Word of God, the Saviour of all and
ruler of heaven and earth, is Jesus. He took flesh. He was anointed by
the Father with the Spirit and became Jesus Christ" (Against
Heresies 3, 9, 3).
And so the battle went on; one group claiming to understand the faith
according to its new theological and philosophical insights, and the
Church defending its received faith while seeking to penetrate further
its mysteries.
The term Gnosticism as a general heading fits a very large but
divided school of thought that answered the question "Who is
Jesus?" in ways the Church found unacceptable. One current of the
school concentrated on denying Christ's divinity by turning him into a
second class deity who hovered somewhere between God and human beings.
Others preferred to accentuate Christ's otherworldliness and rejected
his humanity. What both currents of this one philosophical school had in
common was the denial that Jesus Christ could be God and man at the same
time in the some person. This current of thought included just about
every major heresy of the first centuries of the Christian era. How the
names strike us as foreign to our concerns! But then the havoc wrought
in the Church over these various answers to the question "Who is
Jesus?" was devastating. It was to reach its climax in the heresy
of Arius.
A confrontation
The forerunners to the great Arian break with the traditional
doctrine of the Church came in the form of Gnosticism which accentuated
Christ's special dignity as the most excellent of creatures. Yet it fell
short of naming Christ God. Its theological premises could only carry it
to the point of declaring Jesus Christ an "adopted Son of God"—but
not one in nature.
In all this process the Church's understanding of her faith-reply to
the question "Who is Jesus?" continually grew. As each
interpretation of the answer "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the
living God" was challenged, the penetration into the mystery of
God's revelation and our faith-statement became more fruitful.
What the Church was witnessing was a confrontation between her
faith-proclamation as she received, nourished and held it, and
individual appreciations of the gospel that, resulted from the inability
to sort out philosophical and theological faith-premises and conclusions
from the living faith of the Church. In addition, the process of
clarification of the faith and a genuine development of it went on
during all the confrontations that marked what are called heresies. The
two columns that supported the Church in its struggle to keep the faith
were a humble acceptance of God's word, as it lives in the Church's
tradition, and the teaching office which exists to interpret and
guarantee the gospel message. Underlying these pillars was the promise
of the Holy Spirit who would not abandon Christ's Church to error and
false faith.
PART III
Reply of the Councils
The great anvil on which the doctrinal statements about Jesus Christ
were worked out in the early centuries of the Christian era were the
Church Councils—particularly those
from Nicaea to Chalcedon. The hammer brought to bear on the
faith-proclamation was human intelligence probing ever more deeply into
the mystery of God made man. The process was set in motion, however, by
the teaching of Arius, a priest of Alexandria who came on the scene in
the early part of the fourth century. It is his doctrine that set the
stage for the long century, 125 years, from Nicaea's decrees to
Chalcedon's dogma. In that period of time the Church was to move toward
a definitive statement of its faith in Jesus Christ. It would put in
doctrinally precise terms the gospel answer to the perennial question:
"Who is Jesus Christ?"
The ecclesiastical struggles that surrounded Arius are a story in
themselves. It is a tale that includes his fights with the bishops of
his region, their arguments and his replies, the popular confusion this
created and, finally, division within the Church. An equally colourful
narrative would be that of the Roman Emperor's part in the life and
activities of the Church in that day. We will forego the pleasure of any
detailed excursions into those adventuresome aspects of the life of the
Church and concentrate here on the answer of Nicaea to the question
"Who is Jesus?"
Living faith
Part of the problem that leads to Nicaea and eventually after it to
Chalcedon is the fact that the New Testament does not speak of
Jesus in terms of what he is—but
rather in terms of what he does, and what is his relationship to us. The
realm of philosophy includes the categories of ontology—being
and its divisions. Thus while it was natural for the philosophically
oriented students of Christianity to seek ontological answers to the
question "Who is Jesus?", it was not, on that account,
necessary that answers in those precise terms would be found in the New
Testament. Rather, Scripture speaks of Jesus as Lord, Son of God,
Saviour, Messiah, Priest and Word. It defined these titles in terms of
what Jesus did. It is fair to say that the New Testament is more
concerned about what is Jesus' relationship to us than in his essence.
To see that Jesus is God requires, in addition to the words of the New
Testament, the living faith of the believing community to interpret
those words.
When Arius asked is Jesus Christ God, he confronted the problem as a
specifically philosophical one that admitted of solution according to
particular categories of thought. However, as soon became apparent, his
appreciation of Scripture was too limited and narrow to yield the rich
harvest of truth that could have satisfied even his philosophical
categories. On the other hand, men like St Athanasius saw in the
Scriptures a realism of the word of God that opened into a much deeper
theological appreciation and assessment of what it means to say
"Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God". The pages of
Scripture for those like Athanasius, who held that the Church could not
be misusing them in her traditional proclamation, yielded the wider
proposition that what is said of the Father is also affirmed of the Son
with the exception that the Son is not said to be the Father. If what is
true about the Father is also true about the Son, except that the Son is
not the Father, then it follows that the Son is all that the Father is,
except for the name of Father.
It was this logic based on the Church's reading of Sacred Scripture
that permitted the affirmation in dogmatic terms of the formula of the
Council of Nicaea. As some scholars have pointed out, the foundation for
such a step was the universal patristic conviction that a realist
epistemology and ontology were implicit in the word of God which the
Scriptures exhibit. The Word of God is true; therefore it expresses what
is.
To summarize a long story of political and ecclesiastical in-fighting
as well as theological controversy, we can best start the discussion of
Nicaea by viewing the two positions held as that first general council
in the history of the Church opened. The position of Arius, which has
been described as a "model of dovetailed logic" has as
its essential starting point the conviction of the absolute
transcendency of God, who was in this case God the Father. There
could be no other but one God. The being, substance and essence of the
one unique God was absolutely incommunicable. If another being shared
the divine nature in any intrinsic sense, there would follow a division
of divine Being into several. Thus everything else but this one
indivisible God must be a result of God's act of creation.
Logically we are brought to the conclusion from these premises that
the Son or Word is subordinate to the Father. The Son was a creature, a
perfect creature, "the first begotten of all creation," but
nonetheless a creature—made out of
nothing by the Father. It also follows in this logical system that as a
creature the Word must have had a beginning. Of course, he was not in
time as we are, but "there was when he was not".
In this theological system Jesus, the Word, was made Son by the
Father in grace. He was an adoptive Son. Thus even though we can use the
term Trinity and speak of three distinct persons, they remain three
utterly different beings, and do not share in any way the same substance
or being as each other. Only the Father is true God. The Son and Spirit
are "God" in an almost figurative sense.
The fullness of time
Arius' argument ran thus: there is only one God. He is eternal and
completely self-sufficient. The Son of God, therefore, must be a created
thing—a creature. Hence he cannot
be God. Neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit possess the same being or
substance as the Father. Arius put his finger on the very core of the
question of the Trinity. How can God be one and three?
The results of the statement that Christ was less than the Father
were dramatic. Either Christ was God or he was not. This was the
question that the faithful understood—the
vast majority of the people. If he wasn't, then his death merited
nothing and men were right back where they started out—back
with Adam. If, however, as the Church held, Christ was God, then his
death was a salvific one, as St Paul says. "But when the fullness
of time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman... that he might redeem
those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of
sons" (Galatians 4:4).
His sacrifice, as described by the author of the Letter to the
Hebrews, was that of the divine Mediator between God and man. This Arius
did not accept.
The dispute began in Alexandria. It spread like a brush fire, and
soon the whole edifice of the Church was in flames. The Emperor
Constantine decided that the time had come to put some order into the
spreading confusion. He convoked the first General Council of the
Church. This was held in Nicaea in 325.
Briefly, the Council of Nicaea decided that the true faith holds, as
it held from the Apostolic Church, that Jesus Christ is "God from
God, light from light, true God from true God, born not made, one in
substance (Homoousion) with the Father …." In this definition,
the Church not only set forth the faith in clear and concise terms but
also used a specific word with which to state and define the faith, The
confusion had been caused by the introduction of specific philosophical
systems and the application of their conclusions to the statement of the
faith. The Council countered by stating the faith and then using a word
that would not lend itself to twisting by proponents of any one
philosophical or theological school of thought. The word "homoousion"
was to become an expression of the living faith of the Church in the
divinity of Jesus Christ.
The Church, with divine authority, can and does state the faith even
in words that are not necessarily found in the pages of Sacred
Scripture. The word homoousion caused many much trouble. Nicaea
used it to establish a touchstone that would state clearly the Catholic
faith. It is a word that was impossible to square with any kind of Arian
doctrine. Quite simply it means that Jesus and the Father are of the
same substance, being, reality. Neither is superior to the other. The
living, conscious teaching Church is the guardian of both the message
and its very wording. Christ's Church not only must pass on the saving
Gospel, but can at times even indicate which words best serve the
Gospel. The witness of the Church is not a vague hope or groundless
euphoria. It is a clear testimony of precise events, a judgment
articulated about certain facts. And, as in any society, the Church has
those who are called to speak for it.
Authentic witness
Obviously, the Church, as an organic whole, cannot testify. Her
spokesmen do. Within the Church some are called to be the official and
authentic spokesmen or witnesses for her. These called by the Spirit,
for the Church, are those teachers, successors to the Apostles, called
bishops. Of their functions in the Church one primary duty is that of
official witness or spokesman for the incarnate witness that is the
living Church. The bishop for the local church and all the bishops for
the universal Church, always with Peter as their head, bear the ministry
of witness in a particular manner.
The bishops gathered at Nicaea spoke in the name of' the whole
Church. They set forth what is the faith of the Church—the
faith that saves. Their principal concern was a pastoral one which was
the result of doctrinal confusion among the faithful. So, to carry out
their pastoral charge, they had first to exercise their teaching office.
Following the Council of Nicaea there was a series of theological
investigations and developments that led to additional clarifications in
the statement of the faith. Some of these investigations went wide of
the mark and brought fresh doctrinal concerns to the attention of the
bishops. Due to the pastoral ramifications of some of the teaching being
aired, additional councils were necessary to state exactly what is the
Church's true faith.
It is of importance to note that in all this development of doctrine
several premises were accepted seemingly by everyone. First, the Church
can and does develop in her appreciation of her faith and precision of
its expression. Theological pluralism, the varied appreciation of the
one faith, cannot properly exist where contradictory positions are held
and proclaimed. The primary function of the teaching office is
the salvation of the faithful. Thus the clarification of doctrinal
differences becomes incumbent on the hierarchy when such divergence of
opinion begins to touch the faith life of the believer in a way that can
lead him or her to a false understanding of the full Gospel message. It
is against this background that there developed the teaching of the
Church about the true identity of Christ and his nature.
The first person to take the definition of Nicaea and spin off a
corollary that caused concern in the Church was Apollinaris, bishop of
Laodicea. He fully accepted that Jesus Christ was truly God and equally
man. But in order to explain how the Word of God and the human Jesus
were united he developed a theory that eventually the Church rejected.
In short, Apollinaris felt that there was only one real source of
activity or soul in Christ. That soul, source of truly human,
intellectual activity was the divine soul. Thus Jesus Christ was a human
body with a divine inner principle or soul.
The difficulty with this theological position was soon evident. If
Christ had no soul, no principle of intellectual activity, then he was
not a "true man". Further, according to the principle that
what Christ did not assume, he did not redeem, if Christ did not take to
himself our complete human nature, then we are not entirely redeemed.
But the Gospel says we are redeemed in the person of Jesus. Therefore,
Christ became whatever we are when we define ourselves as
"man".
In 377 A.D. local gatherings of bishops in Rome and Alexandria
pointed out the flaw in Apollinaris' theory. Pope Damasus confirmed that
the "Son and Word of God did not take the place of the rational and
intellective soul in his (Christ's) body, but assumed and preserved a
soul like ours... but without sin." (D. 159). Thus another step
forward was made. The Church clarifies what it meant when it said Christ
was a man. He had a human body and principle of intellectual activity—a
soul.
To understand how Christ could be a complete man yet also "true
God of true God" requires that we understand the basic and utter
unity of the person Jesus Christ. He was one, yet with both a human and
divine nature. The clarification of the unity of Christ came with the
Council of Chalcedon. In the meantime another important aspect of
Christ's reality was clarified at the Council of Ephesus. Nestorius,
bishop of Constantinople, was indirectly responsible for this council.
He taught that Jesus was a man and also God. He failed to accept the
intimate union of Jesus the man and Christ the Son of God. Eventually
his argument came to centre on the phenomenon of Christ's birth.
Nestorius held that Mary gave birth to the man Jesus. She was
therefore justly called the "Christotokos", the bearer of
Christ. The Church argued that the union of Christ and the Eternal Word
is such that when Mary gave birth to Jesus she also gave birth in
Christ, to God. Eventually the Council of Ephesus which met in 431
defined that Mary was truly the Mother of God (D. 251). The unity of the
humanity and divinity of Christ in the person of Jesus is such that when
Mary gave birth to Jesus she brought forth the Eternal Son of the
Eternal Father. She is thus called the "theotokos", Mother of
God.
In summary, by the time the Council of Ephesus closed, the Church had
made clear that she understood Peter's declaration of faith "You
are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt 16:16), to mean
that Christ was one person with two natures, one divine, one human. He
was one Lord who was of the same being with the Father and yet one with
all men and women in his humanity.
In the years following the Council of Ephesus several interpretations
of the words used at Nicaea and Ephesus began to circulate. These
versions of what the Councils meant reopened what had come to be
considered a closed case, and soon the whole Church was in controversy
again. Thus we come to the Council of Chalcedon. This gathering of
bishops took place in 451. It undertook to set forth clearly and
definitively what the Church's answer is to the question: "What
think you of the Christ?"
Pope Leo I wrote to the council an explicit statement of the Church's
faith about Jesus Christ. The council concurred. The letter of Leo has
come down to us as his Tome. It states, as does the council, that the
Eternal Word of God and Our Lord Jesus Christ are one and identical.
Jesus Christ is perfect both in his divinity and in his humanity. He is
true God and true man with a human body and soul. In his divinity he was
begotten of the Father before time. In his humanity he was born of the
Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. The two natures, human and divine, are
not changed but united in one person. Thus there is one person, Jesus
Christ, the only begotten Son, God the Word, the Lord, who is God and
man.
This formulation of the ancient faith has the advantage of a clarity
that answered the theological problems of the day and it makes clear and
concise the Church's understanding of the richness of God's revelation
to his people. This long struggle within the Church for clarity was not
one of theological opinion. It centred on the question "Who is
Christ?" and the Church's faith response. The Council of Chalcedon
closes with the warning that "as these truths have been formulated
with all possible accuracy and care, the holy, ecumenical council has
ordained that no one may bring forward or put into writing or devise or
entertain or teach to others any other faith." (D. 303).
In this way did the Church reach a clear definition of her primitive
faith that Jesus Christ is both God and man, our Saviour. And for well
over 1,300 years did this faith endure, in in unbroken line, a living
teaching tradition that saw the whole Church accept as true the faith
declaration that Christ is true God and true man, even as the same
Church had to face all kinds of divisions, disruptions and difficulties
with other doctrinal matters. This bedrock of Christian creed and
doctrine remained untouched. It survived as the basic absolute Christian
belief. It was and continues to be the reply of centuries of faith and
millions and millions of believers led by the Spirit to the question
"Who is Jesus Christ?".
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