As-a-man Christology

Talking points:

1.    What is it?

I’ll give a brief explanation of what I mean by As a man Christology.

2.       History.

How this view developed and affected Christianity.

3.       How to Guide.

How to properly counter, engage and argue with your opponent without talking past each other.

 

1.       What is it?

Most people who believe Jesus is God would say that he was born, he grew up, etc., like most of us. After all this is what scripture says: “He grew in wisdom, and age, and grace with God" (Luke 2:52).

They would even say Jesus really suffered and eventually died.

But when you ask: How can this be if Jesus is God?

They will invariably say something like: Well, He did all those things in or through His human nature or His flesh only. In other words, they would say something like he was born as a man, he grew in wisdom as a man, he died as a man, etc. And by “he” most Christians refer to the 2nd Person of the Trinity, “God the Son.” It was this Divine Person who “took on flesh/human nature” at the virgin birth.

So whenever the NT refers to "Jesus" or "the Christ" or "Jesus Christ" what the NT writers really mean is that impersonal human nature that this Divine Person, God the Son, took on at the Incarnation. This means that you have to read the NT through some kind of bifocal lenses, as it were. But when you point out that the virgin birth records the genesis (origin) of the Messiah (Mat 1.1, 18), how he came to be, i.e., came to exist they will say something like: Of course, we agree that he came to be as a man.

And whether they know it or not, they're actually saying that the name Jesus and the title Christ refer to that impersonal human nature that God the Son assumed at the Incarnation.

In short, “Jesus” is the name of a human nature and not a human person.

However, when they say as a man that isn't the official trinitarian doctrine. It should really be as man because according to their own doctrine (as we shall see) the one we call Jesus was man but not a man.

For example, in a 1985 article from the noted Trinity Journal, by Geisler and Watkins, they say:

It is true that in Chalcedonian orthodoxy "God the Son" united himself to a personless human nature.

In other words, the Son of God had generic human nature but he was not himself a human person. For that would make 2 persons in a person, which was an early heretical view known as Nestorianism.

 

So in order not to talk or debate past each other we have to understand the history of this way of thinking about the Son of God.

 

2.       History

More than 125 years after the Council of Nicaea declared Jesus “true God of true God” and after dozens of other councils rejecting Nicea, the question of how to define the humanity of Jesus vs the Deity of the Son remained unresolved. And that's because Nicea ended up being the pandora's box that spawned other heresies that to this day plague Trinitarian Christianity.

At the center of it all were questions about how many persons, how many natures, or wills there really were in the Son of God.

Historian Dr. Richard Rubenstein in his book When Jesus Became God says:

“What was needed to clear up [this] confusion was something that the Nicene Creed alone could not supply: A doctrine explaining how God could be one and yet consist of two or three separate entities. And the development of this doctrine...could not take place without new language. It was necessary to create a new theological vocabulary….”  

Thus was born the so-called Chalcedonian creed of 451:

Following the holy Fathers we teach [and confess] with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God, perfect [very] God, and perfect [very Man]; begotten before the ages of the Father according to his Divinity, and in the last days, for us and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures.

Modern-day trinitarians, like the popular Desiring God ministries, interpret Chalcedonian Christology as follows:

The kind of humanity Jesus took in the incarnation was impersonal. He did not add a human person to himself when he took a fully human nature. His humanity is not only impersonal (anhypostasis), but it’s also in-personal (enhypostasis), in that its personhood is in the personhood of the eternal second person of the Trinity. The fully divine Son is the person who took full humanity and remains the “one person” of the God-man.

So, according to this official trini doctrine, Jesus is not a man, i.e., a human person. That’s because the real Person of Jesus is God the Son. Hence, scriptures like Mat 24.36 have to be reinterpreted, reimagined in ways that are not only unbiblical but nonsensical!

Note the amazing ways such verses are twisted by Evangelical publications like the ESV Study Bible:

“In his incarnate life, Jesus learned things as other human beings learn them (cf. Luke 2:52; Heb. 5:8).  On the other hand, Jesus was also fully God, and, as God, he had infinite knowledge (cf. John 2:25; 16:30; 21:17). Here he is apparently speaking in terms of his human nature. This is similar to other statements about Jesus which could be true of his human nature only, and not of his divine nature (he grew and became strong, Luke 2:40; increased in stature, Luke 2:52; was about 30 years old, Luke 3:23; was weary, John 4:6; was thirsty, John 19:28; was hungry, Matt. 4:2; was crucified, 1 Cor. 2:8). How Jesus could have limited knowledge and yet know all things is difficult, and much remains a mystery [card], for nobody else has ever been both God and man.”

The noted Anglican Bishop Richard Hanson was right to describe this so-called Double Nature doctrine, aka Hypostatic Union “as a Space-suit Christology. Just as the astronaut, in order to operate in a part of the universe where there is no air and where he has to experience weightlessness, puts on an elaborate space-suit which enables him to live and act in this new, unfamiliar environment, so the Logos [i.e., the eternal Son] put on a body which enabled him to behave as a human being among human beings. But his relation to this body is no closer than that of an astronaut to his spacesuit.”

 

3.       How to Guide

How to refute this way of thinking or, at the very least, how not to talk past our opponents?

First, show them that the NT writers never portray Jesus as a “God-man” (some kind of a human-divine hybrid) but simply as a man, I.e., a human person. Show them that nowhere in scripture is Jesus ever said to have done anything as a man.

For example, scripture doesn’t say that the Son was born as a man, the Son was about 30 years old as a man, no one knows the day or hour nor the Son as a man, that the Son died as a man only.

As a matter of fact, Jesus’ favorite self-designation comes from a well-known Hebraic title, son of man, which simply means a human person.

In other words, Jesus' all-time favorite designation was not as a man.

For example, imagine if Jesus had meant: “I as a man will return on the clouds of heaven.”

The son of man title goes back to the OT prophecy about how God one day would procreate (beget) a unique and special human Son, who would also be the lineal descendant of King David. God would designate this human person as His specially anointed one, “the Lord’s Messiah” (Luke 2:26).

Hence, the most used and alluded to OT verse by the NT writers: Daniel 7:13.

There are more than 40 NT references that echo or directly cite Dan 7:13 and the one that follows it is another NT favorite, Dan 7:14.

NOTE the reason why God [called the Ancient of Days here] granted this human person unprecedented authority in the first place. Because he is a human being!

This is perhaps why Jesus uses the title over 80 times in the 4 Gospels alone! Also NOTE the interesting usage by John in his Gospel.

John 5:25 “Truly, truly, I say to you that an hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and the ones having heard will live.

26 For just as the Father has life in Himself, so also He gave to the Son to have life in Himself.

27 And He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is a son of man [i.e., a human person].

When we break down this last verse we see how it fits with Dan 7:13-14 like a puzzle.

John 5:27a reads: “And he [God] gave him [son of man] authority…”

And Dan 7:14a: “And authority was given to him [son of man]…”

Then John 5:27b tells us why: “Because he is son of man [i.e., a human being].”

And Dan 7:13 has already identified the subject as the same exalted, glorified human being.

In fact, the humanity of Jesus is so important that later Paul warns:

"If someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed....or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted....let them be under God's curse" (2Cor 11.4; Gal 1:8)!

This warning is nicely captured by the late prominent Finnish scholar Räisänen:

“The farther one moves from the Jewish-messianic roots of Christology, the more the humanity of Jesus fades.” (The Rise of Christian Beliefs, p 225)

Hence, in John 6.57 the Son says “I live because of the Father” just like in 5.26.

John 1:14 says "the glory of the one and only Son" is "from the Father."

John 3:35 "The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in His hands."

John 5:19 “The Son can do nothing by himself."

And John 17:2 says The Father gives the Son “authority to judge.”

This means the Son is forever subordinate to God; something that a “God-man” by nature should never be!  

John goes on to say the Father is greater than the Son, without qualification:

John 10:29 The Father "is greater than all";

John 14:28 The Son explicitly says "the Father is greater than I."

Hence, the virgin birth is an account of the “origin” (genesis) of the Messiah, the human Son of God. It doesn’t say this is the origin of the Son of God as a man.

That’s why Luke 1:30-35 describes how the Son came to be, i.e., a coming into existence of a human person and not the Incarnation of a 2nd Person, God the Son.

John’s famous phrase “the only-begotten Son” further reinforces the fact that God procreated a human person.

Hence, John talks about how “God gave His only-begotten Son....as a sacrifice to take away our sins." John 3.16; 1 John 4.10

This is a clear reference to the atoning sacrifice and death of the human Son of God and not some impersonal human nature/flesh called Jesus.

The same spells true when Paul says in Gal 2.20b that he lives "by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” And Romans 5.10: “We were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.”

 

Summary

The Chalcedonian creed implies that the Son is at best equivocating, at worst lying when he says things like:

“Why do you call me good? Only God is good” when in reality Jesus was talking about himself! [Wink wink Christology]

Or “About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” when Jesus really did know but wasn't saying! In other words, I'm not tellin'!!

But according to the NT the Son and not just his “human nature” didn’t know all things:

·       In Mark 5.7; Luke 8:28 The Son doesn’t know the name of the demon…who knew him!

·       In Mark 5.30; Luke 8:45 The Son didn’t know who touched him!

That’s why Luke 2:52 says “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”

 

Chalcedon states the Son was "begotten before the ages/worlds" and came "into the world," i.e., into Mary. But as we just saw the virgin birth is an account of how the Son of God came to be and not how God the Son took on or assumed human nature/flesh.

The Son came from the womb of Mary not through the womb of Mary! That is, the Son did not enter the womb of Mary from outside. But more importantly the God-man of the Chalcedon creed offers no real salvation because there’s no real human representation!

Paul in 1Tim 2.5 says “For there is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, himself human.”

This is the reason why the Apostle John wrote his whole Gospel:

"But these have been recorded so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief/this faith you may have life in his name." John 20:31

In other words, if you do not believe that the human Son of God is the promised Jewish Messiah (who suffered and died for your sins), you will not be saved.

Again, there's nothing here about a God-man who suffered and died through a human nature/flesh called Jesus. After all, what would it mean to die through a nature?

There were many opportunities for the NT writers to identify this Chalcedon "God-man." Instead what we find are statements about a human person who....

·       The people "praised God for sending a man with such great authority" (Mat 9.8);

·       The people knew that the Son of David had to be a man (Mat 12.23);

·       A centurion remarking: "Truly this man was the Son of God." Mar 15.39

·       Peter telling people that "Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know" (Acts 2.22);

·       Paul telling the Athenians how God has "set a day in which He is about to judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He appointed" (Acts 17:31);

·       And Paul describing how "by a man came death, by another man has come also the resurrection of the dead." 1Cor 15:21, similar to Romans 5:12.

NOTE: none of these biblical statements say as a man.

Trinitarians would do well to heed the warning from some of their own noted philosophers and theologians like Oxford Prof. Leonard Prestige who said that compared to other early heresies like Nestorianism, Chalcedon “was a crowning mercy [because] it suppressed psychology, to the avoidance of untold heresy, though also to the complete postponement of positive Christological advance.”

“Official Christology remained negative and abstract, and for that reason abstraction became a necessity of theological thought. The next stage necessarily came to consist in a refinement of the accepted abstractions in the cause of clearer and ever clearer statement. But this process did not and could not lead to clearer comprehension and insight into substantial truth and fact.”