One Person, Two Natures in Union (Midweek Message)

One Person, Two Natures in Union

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

January 4, 2017

We often hear people deride concern for theological accuracy.  They point to late medieval theologians and say they argued about “how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.”  Though the scholastics did concern themselves with the rational implications of belief in non-physical beings and their relation to the physical universe, they never, to my mind, addressed this question as such.  One scholar has suggested the idea first arose in English during the early reformation in a pun that connected “needle’s point” with “needless point.” 

Trust in God and love of others are the heart of faith.  Contemplative experience of God is powerful.  Theology and doctrine seem pale by comparison.   But as C.S. Lewis notes,

“Theology is like a map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than [experience itself].  Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. [Experience of God] may [be] real, and [is] certainly exciting but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map” (Mere Christianity, pp. 135-137). 

A good example of this is found in how we understand many of the texts we have been reading the last few weeks about the incarnation of God in the birth of Jesus.  Both deacon Meredith and I in homilies referred to the Blessed Mother of our Lord as “the Mother of God.”  Some may have flinched at the use of this phrase.  But there is nothing new under the sun. 

One Sunday in the early 400s, a priest gave a stirring homily in the main church in Constantinople, the capital of the Empire.   Seated in the archbishop’s chair was the Patriarch of Constantinople, a beloved prelate named Nestorius.  The preacher spoke about the mother of Jesus, and repeatedly used the word Theotokos (“God-bearer”) to describe her.  Christians had been using the term for more than 200 years, and it was particularly popular in Greek speaking centers of the Church like Alexandria and Constantinople.  But Nestorius was originally from Antioch, where Syriac was still often used.  

At the end of the homily, the Patriarch stood and went to the pulpit to, as he said, “correct a few misunderstandings” he had heard in the homily.  He said we should call Mary the Christ-bearer, not the God-bearer, the Mother of Christ, not the Mother of God.  God had no beginning or end, no Father or Mother.  Mary was the mother of Jesus’ human nature, not the mother of his Godhood.  Murmuring and outright catcalls broke out in the congregation.  After church, a riot ensued and poured out into the streets.  The police restored order, but the controversy spread and grew into that ugly series of arguments called the Christological controversies that lasted another two centuries.

Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, quickly responded to Nestorius’ speech.    Cyril argued that Nestorius’ argument misunderstood the nature of the incarnation.  By splitting the humanity of Christ from his divinity, Nestorius was treating Jesus as if he were two persons.   This meant that God had not really become truly human. If Godhood in Christ had to keep a good distance from his human nature in order to keep God divine, that meant that human nature was distasteful.   Cyril said if it was alright to say that God, through Jesus, performed miracles like raising Lazarus, then it should also be alright to say that God, in Jesus, was born and later died.

Cyril got the Emperor to call a Council to help settle the issue (to prevent further riots), and in AD 431, a General or Ecumenical Council of the Church met in Ephesus.  In some ways the outcome was cooked, since Cyril chaired the Council and Ephesus was a hotbed of use of the term Theotokos. Nestorius was deposed and his teaching declared heretical.    He went into retirement at a monastery, but never recanted his belief, saying that Cyril had twisted his meaning.   The Great Church of the East followed his teaching, and took Christianity to Persia, India, and China.  It is only in the last 40 years that the Church of the East, the Eastern Orthodox, and Rome have come to an understanding that perhaps the problem was not heresy by Nestorius, but cultural differences between people thinking in Greek and people thinking in local languages like Syriac or Armenian. 

All Christians agree that Mary is not the Mother of the Holy Trinity.  But all Christians who accept the Creed agree that Jesus was the eternal Word of God from before all worlds, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and in this sense God became truly human in the birth of Jesus. Since Jesus was truly God and truly human, and since these two natures were perfectly joined together in his one person, Mary can be rightly honored as Mother of God.  

Angels on the head of a pin?  I don’t think so.  How we understand the incarnation informs how we think about many other things, like whether human nature and the divine nature are wholly irreconcilable, or whether it is distasteful to be human.   Accepting orthodox Christology here bears direct fruit in our daily life. 

Grace and peace, and a joyful New Year. 

Fr. Tony+