Christology

In the Bible Jesus Christ is clearly presented as both God and man. Jesus is the Word of God made flesh (John,1:14). He is the Son of God born of a woman (Galatians, 4:4). “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians,2:9)

This Biblical Christology was the main subject of deep study, discussion and also controversy during the first centuries of Christian history. While Christian theology has always maintained the belief that Jesus Christ is truly man, that He is truly God, and that the Godman, Jesus Christ, is one and the same person, controversy arose on how the two natures of Jesus Christ (His divine nature and His human nature) were co-existing in the person of Jesus. Various theories were put forward. Some of them were considered not in line with the Bible and Christian tradition. Important ecumenical councils were convened to clarify this matter. The conclusions of these councils became the official creed of the Catholic Church (the Nicene-Constantinople Creed is so called because it was written at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople). Let us briefly go through the main early Christological controversies:

(1)	Arianism : Arius was a priest from Alexandria. He was a brilliant theologian. He taught that Jesus Christ was created by God the Father, and was not of the same substance as the Father. This theory was condemned at the Council of Nicaea (325), which affirmed: “... I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father...” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 465)
(2)	Nestorianism: Nestorius was a monk, who became the patriarch of Constantinople. He taught that Jesus had two distinct persons: the divine person (the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, begotten by the Father from all eternity) and the human person (born of the Virgin Mary through the work of the Holy Spirit). Consequently Nestorius opposed the use of the title “Mother of God” for the Virgin Mary on the grounds that, while the Father begot Jesus as God, Mary bore him as a man. Mary is only the mother of Jesus, the man. She can not be called mother of God. The Ecumenical Council of Ephesus was convened in 431 to settle the matter. This council (reinforced by the Council of Chalcedon in 451) clarified the Catholic doctrine, pronouncing that Jesus, true God and true man, has two distinct natures that are inseparably joined in one person and partake of the one divine substance. The Council used the Greek word “hypostasis” to mean “substance” or “person”, and said: Jesus’ human nature and His Divine nature are united “hypostatically”, i.e. united in the hypostasis or the person of the Word: “…the Word, uniting to himself in his person the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man.” Christ's humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it his own, from his conception. For this reason the Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God by the human conception of the Son of God in her womb: "Mother of God, not that the nature of the Word or his divinity received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh." (Catechism of the Catholic Church,466)
(3)	Monophysitism: This theory is sometimes known as Eutychianism, after Eutyches, a mid - 5th - century monk of a Constantinople monastery. Eutyches taught that in Jesus Christ the humanity was absorbed by the divinity, ‘dissolved like a drop of honey in the sea.’“The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine person of God's Son assumed it. Faced with this heresy, the fourth ecumenical council, at Chalcedon in 451, confessed: ‘we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; ‘like us in all things but sin’. He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God. We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person’.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 467)
(4)	“The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man and our brother: ‘What he was, he remained and what he was not, he assumed’, sings the Roman Liturgy. And the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom proclaims and sings: ‘O only-begotten Son and Word of God, immortal being, you who deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, you who without change became man and were crucified, O Christ our God, you who by your death have crushed death, you who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us!’”( Catechism of the Catholic Church, 469)
(5)	Hypostatic Union: The Union of Christ’s two natures (Divine and Human) in the One person (the second person of the Trinity) is called ‘Hypostatic Union’ (the Greek word hypostasis means person)