What are the eleven historical views that have been proposed to explain the nature(s)/person of Christ? (For this question, just list them and say them to yourself so you know how to pronounce them. We’ll define them on upcoming cards.)
- Arianism
- Apollinarianism
- Ebionism
- Docetism
- Eutychianism
- Nestorianism
- Functional Christology
- Adoptionism
- Anhypostatic Christology
- Kenoticism
- Dynamic Incarnation
What did Karl Barth believe concerning Jesus’s humanity?
Barth believed in Jesus’s humanity but saw nothing remarkable about it. It was not very revealing of the nature of God, and in fact may have done more to conceal it.
What was most significant to faith according to Karl Barth?
Supernatural revelation.
What did Rudolph Bultmann believe about the significance of Jesus’ humanity?
Following the lead of Martin Kähler, Bultmann divides the history of Jesus into the actual events of His human life and the impact He made upon believers. It’s not crucial what Jesus did, but how He transforms our lives. For example - His physical resurrection was not as important as whether we have been lifted from our old self-centered lives to an openness in faith to the future.
What was most significant to faith according to Rudolph Bultmann?
Existential content of the preaching of the early church.
Define and refute Arianism.
Arius, 4th century Alexandrian presbyter. God alone possesses the attributes of deity, but cannot share his being or essence with anyone else, or else He is not God. Jesus, although a perfect creature, was not self-existent, had no communion or direct knowledge of the Father, and was liable to change and sin. He was an intermediate being between God the Father and the rest of creation, a created god, but not God. His view, although condemned at the Council of Nicea in 325 and subsequent councils, lingers today among Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Refutation - Jesus was dependent upon the Father for the exercise of his divine attributes during his earthly ministry, but when he states that he and the Father are one (John 10:30 and 17:21), he expresses a great closeness or even an interchangeability between himself and the Father.
Define and refute Apollinarianism.
A truncation of Jesus’s humanity. Apollinarius thought the idea of Jesus having human soul, mind, and reason as well as divine soul, mind, and reason was absurd. So he said that Jesus had a human body, but a divine soul which trumped His humanity.
Refutation - If Christ lacked human will, mind, and reason, it “hardly seemed correct to call him human at all” (Erickson, 652). Apollinarianism was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 381.
Define and refute Ebionism.
Ebionism can be traced to the Judaizers of the apostolic period. Ebionites denied the real or ontological deity of Jesus. They rejected the virgin birth, and believed Jesus was primarily a human, whom, at least for a time, was given the power of God to an unusual degree.
Refutation - Ebionism had to ignore a large portion of Scripture referring to Christ’s preexistence, the virgin birth, his uniqueness and function.
Define and refute Docetism.
Docetism was the belief that Jesus only “seemed” to be human. (Also Gnosticism and Marcionism.) Influenced by Plato and Aristotle - gradations of reality and the idea that God was impassable, or that He could not change nor suffer. “Jesus’s humanity was simply an illusion.” He was like a ghost.
Refuation - The church recognized that this view meant the loss of Jesus’s humanity, which has much Biblical support, and thus any real connection between Him and us.
Define and refute Functional Christology.
20th century modification of the doctrine of the full deity of Jesus. It is an emphasis on what Jesus did rather than his nature. Oscar Cullmann’s book, Christology of the New Testament, presents his approach in using “salvation history” (Heilsgeschichte), or what Jesus has done in history, as an organizing principle for his examination of the various New Testament titles for Jesus. The New Testament never asks “what is the nature of Christ,” but first of all, “what is his function?”
Refutation - Passages like John 1:1 (In the beginning was the Word…) and 1 John 4:2-3 (every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ…) show that the New Testament does not always put priority on the functional over the ontological. Functional theologians may also be coloring their interpretation of the Bible with modern pragmatism.
List and explain Erickson’s six biblical evidences for the deity of Christ.
- Jesus’s Self Consciousness - He made claims that would be inappropriate if made by someone less than God: sending his angels (Matt 13:41), the prerogative to forgive sins (Mark 2:5), His prerogative to judge the world (Matt. 25:31-46), and His oneness with the Father (John 10:30). Jesus doesn’t deny the high preist calling Him the Son of God (Matt. 26:63-64).
- The Gospel of John - The prologue expresses the deity of Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The remainder of the gospel supports and amplifies the prologue.
- Hebrews - The opening chapter speaks of the Son as the radiance of the glory of God and the exact representation of His nature. He is superior to humans and angels.
- Paul - Paul speaks of Jesus’s judgment (2 Tim. 4:1), His deity living in bodily form (Col. 2:9), and His existence in the form of God (Phil 2:5-11).
- The Term “Lord” - The New Testament calls Jesus in His risen state “Lord” (kurios). Several New Testament references to Jesus as “Lord” are Old Testament quotations that use one of the Hebrew names for God (Acts 2:20-21, Rom. 10:13). “Lord” is also equated with God the Father, the sovereign God (Matt. 1:20), and Jesus (Luke 2:11, Rev. 19:16).
- The Evidence of the Resurrection - The resurrection would have signified the end of the world to a Jew at the time. It would have been evidence that God himself confirmed Jesus’s earthly ministry, the Son of Man was Jesus the man, and God was ultimately revealed in Jesus.
List and explain Erickson’s four implications of the deity of Christ.
- We can have real knowledge of God. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
- Redemption is available to us. Christ was not merely human, but an infinite God who died and rose again to save us.
- God and humanity have been reunited. God himself bridged the gap created by sin.
- Worship of Christ is appropriate. Jesus is God in the same sense and degree as the Father, and worthy of such recognition.
List and explain the various aspects of Jesus’ humanity in terms of His physical, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual life.
- Jesus had a fully human body. He was born. He grew in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52). He experienced hunger (Matt 4:2), thirst (John 19:28), and fatigue (John 4:6). He suffered and died.
- Jesus thought, reasoned, and felt. He loved and had compassion (John 13:23; 11:3; Mark 10:21). He reacted with appropriate emotions like sorrow (Matt 26:37), joy (John 15:11), anger, and grief (Mark 3:5). He wept (John 11:35).
- Jesus knew the past, present and future to a degree not available to ordinary human beings. He knew the thoughts of men (John 2:25) and all that was going to happen to Him (John 18:4). His knowledge was also limited (Mark 13:32).
- Jesus’s prayer life was a clear indication of human dependence on the Father. He prayed regularly as at the garden of Gethsemane and before choosing His disciples (Luke 6:12)
Explain the question of Jesus’s humanity in light of the fact that He never sinned.
The question is whether or not Jesus was fully human if he never sinned. A. E. Taylor said “If a man does not commit certain transgressions … it must be because he never felt the appeal of them.” But in Hebrews 4:15 we see that Jesus was tempted in every respect that we are but did not sin. The temptation was intense. Jesus was in agony at Gethsemane when He struggled to do the Father’s will. (Luke 22:44) While Jesus could have sinned, He did not.
List and explain Erickson’s six implications of the humanity of Christ.
- The atoning death of Jesus can truly avail for us. “He was one of us, and thus could truly offer a sacrifice on our behalf.”
- “Jesus can truly sympathize with and intercede for us. He has experienced all that we might undergo.”
- Jesus exhibited the true nature of humanity, what God designed it to be.
- Jesus can be our example, a model of the Christian life.
- Human nature is good. It’s not inherently evil, but was corrupted. Jesus became human to remind us that humanity is not evil.
- God is not totally transcendent. He came to live among us, and acts within the human realm today.
What is Eutychianism?
Form of Docetism. Eutyches’ position is not clear, however he seemed to “reject the idea of two natures as contrary to the Scripture and to the opinions of the fathers” (Erickson, 665). There were two natures before His incarnation, and one after.
What is Nestorianism?
Nestorius’s exact position is unclear, due to much political upheaval in his time. He believed that Mary could not have born God, so she must have birthed a man who was a vehicle for God, and He became divine sometime after birth. Nestorianism came to be known as a heresy that basically split the God-man into two distinct persons.
Define and refute Adoptionism.
The idea that the man Jesus was adopted as God’s Son at some point after His birth, such as His baptism or resurrection.
Refutation - There are major obstacles to this view from Scripture, such as Christ’s preexistence, the pre-birth narrative, and the virgin birth.
Define and refute Anhypostatic Christology.
The idea that the divine being, God, took on impersonal humanity rather than an individual human personality.
Refutation - The idea that the divine Logos became united with the whole human race is absurd. Like Apollinarianism, “denying the individual humanness of Jesus intimates that he was predominantly divine” (Erickson, 667).
Define and refute Kenoticism.
The idea that Jesus exchanged his deity for humanity, in that He emptied Himself of the form of God (Phil. 2:6-7).
Refutation - This is close to being right, but there is Scriptural evidence that Jesus was both God and human at the same time, not successively.
Define and refute Dynamic Incarnation.
The idea that the incarnation was the power of God present in a human being, similar to dynamic monarchianism.
Refutation - There are several emphases in Scripture surrounding the fullness of God in Jesus’s body (Col. 2:9), the preexistence of Christ (John 1:18; 8:58), and the uniqueness of His sonship (John 3:16).
What was the Chalcedonian Creed and what was its significance?
This was a statement issued at the council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451 affirming the Nicene Creed that Jesus had two natures: fully divine and fully human.
What is Donald Baillie’s paradox of grace?
In support of dynamic incarnation: The idea that when a believer does something right it is God who has done it, reflects the perfect union of God and man in the Incarnation.
List and explain the five basic tenets of the doctrine of Christ’s two natures in one Person.
- The incarnation was more an addition of human attributes than a loss of divine attributes. Jesus emptied himself (Phil. 2:7) of equality with God, not the form of God. He became functionally subordinate to the Father.
- Contrary to what Ryrie says, Erickson states that the union of Jesus’s two natures means they did not function independently. He had a circumstance-induced limitation on the exercise of his power and capacities. His human brain grew gradually in terms of consciousness and over time, He became aware of His divinity. His taking on humanity was like the world’s fastest sprinter tying one of his legs to a partner in a three legged race.
- We must be mindful about thinking of the incarnation in terms of the human conceptions of humanity and deity, the finite and the infinite. Jesus’s humanity was the perfect humanity of Adam and Eve before the fall, and that of our future glorified bodies.
- The incarnation came from above rather than from below. God is unlimited and is therefore able to condescend to humanity, and not the reverse. Jesus as a human could not have become like God.
- Jesus was a complex person with a complex personality. He was not predictable. His personality included qualities of deity such as beyond human experience, knowledge and love.
