Christology

The New Testament's Christology begins before the incarnation, with the Son's eternal existence as the second person of the Trinity.

John 1:1-3: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God (pros ton theon, with God, face to face with God, in intimate relation with God), and the Word was God (theos en ho logos, God was the Word; the predicate nominative indicates the nature, not the identity: the Word partook fully of the divine nature). He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made." The Logos is eternal (was, en, imperfect tense, continuous existence; not "came to be", egeneto), personal (with God), divine (was God), and the agent of all creation.

Philippians 2:5-7: "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God (morphe theou, the form, the essential character of God), did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped (harpagmon, something to be seized and held), but emptied himself (ekenosen, the kenosis: self-emptying), by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." The pre-existent Son voluntarily empties himself, not of his divine nature (he remains "in the form of God") but of the exercise of certain divine prerogatives, and takes on the form of a servant.

Colossians 1:15-17: "He is the image (eikon, the exact image, the visible expression) of the invisible God, the firstborn (prototokos, the preeminent one, the one who holds the position of primacy; not "first created", see John 1:3) of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." The pre-existent Son is the agent and goal of all creation, and the one in whom the coherence of the universe is maintained.

Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-38 are the two Gospel accounts of the incarnation's beginning. Both locate it in a supernatural conception: Mary conceives by the Holy Spirit while a virgin.

Matthew 1:22-23 connects this to Isaiah 7:14: "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 'Behold, the virgin (parthenos, παρθένος, virgin, young woman; translating the Hebrew almah, עַלְמָה, young woman of marriageable age) shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel (Emmanuel, עִמָּנוּאֵל, God with us).'" Matthew reads Isaiah's almah as parthenos (virgin) and sees the fulfillment in Mary's conception.

Luke 1:34-35 records the mechanics of the promise: "Mary said to the angel, 'How will this be, since I am a virgin?' And the angel answered her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.'" The Spirit's overshadowing (episkiasei, the same language as the Shekinah-cloud overshadowing the tabernacle) is the mechanism.

The theological significance of the virgin birth: (1) It is the mechanism of the incarnation, the eternal Son entering the human condition. (2) It preserves the sinlessness of Christ: conceived by the Spirit, not through the ordinary human channel through which Adam's sin is transmitted. (3) It is the sign of the new creation: a birth in which the Creator acts directly, as at the first creation, not through ordinary creaturely means.

The Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) produced the classic formulation of the two natures of Christ, the theological answer to four centuries of Christological controversy:

"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, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; that he is of one substance with the Father as touching his Godhead, and of one substance with us as touching his manhood; that he is like us in all things apart from sin; that as touching his Godhead, he was born of the Father before the worlds; but as touching his manhood, he was born in these last days for us and for our salvation from the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God (Theotokos); that this one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God must be acknowledged in two natures (duo phuseis) without confusion (asynchutos), without change (atreptos), without division (adiairetos), without separation (achoristos)."

The four adverbs are the theological guardrails against the four main heresies: (1) without confusion, against Eutychianism, which merged the two natures into a single mixed nature; (2) without change, against Apollinarianism, which replaced Christ's human mind with the Logos; (3) without division and (4) without separation, against Nestorianism, which threatened to make Christ two persons. The Chalcedonian formula holds the tension: two complete natures, one person, the divine and human neither mixed nor separated.

The full humanity of Christ is as important as his full divinity, because it is the full humanity that qualifies him to be the representative and substitute for the human race.

Hebrews 2:14-17: "Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things... Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." The "had to" (opheilen, was obligated, was necessary) is the key: the solidarity with humanity was not optional. He had to be fully human to be the high priest who stands in for humanity.

The Gospels' portrait of Jesus's humanity: he was hungry (Matthew 4:2, after the forty-day fast), thirsty (John 19:28, from the cross), tired (John 4:6, "weary from his journey"), grieved (John 11:35, "Jesus wept", the shortest verse in the New Testament, and the most important for incarnational theology), and he was afraid/troubled (Mark 14:33-36, Gethsemane). A Jesus who did not really hunger, thirst, tire, grieve, and fear was not the Jesus of the Gospels, and could not have been "tempted in every way as we are" (Hebrews 4:15).

Hebrews 5:8: "Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered." The learning is real, the human Son, in the weakness of the flesh, genuinely learned what obedience to the Father required in suffering. This is not divine omniscience; it is the genuine development of the human Son.

The Sanctum holds the full Chalcedonian Christology: the eternal Son who was in the beginning with God, who emptied himself and took flesh, who was born of a virgin, who was fully God and fully man without confusion or separation, who lived and suffered and died and rose as the representative of the human race. The Sanctum's engagement with Scripture is always an engagement with the one who is himself the Word become flesh.