The Nature of Jesus Christ

Christ was born in Bethlehem of a virgin. He took on a mortal body, yet without inherited sin. In His nature He is fully God and fully man, in one nature and one person. His nature became a controversy in the 5th Century, known as the Nestorian Controversy.

Theodor and his pupil Nestorius (386-451AD) championed Nestorianism, holding that Jesus had two separate natures, the human and the divine. They were trying to counter an overemphasis on Christ’s divinity in the Alexandrian sector of the church, where Mary received the title mother of God. The Nestorians held that there was divisibility in His nature, so that Mary was mother only of His humanity.

Some saw Nestorianism as reducing Christ’s divinity. Some have taken the Nestorian position further and claimed that Jesus was a man who became the Son of God at His baptism, when the Holy Spirit allegedly entered Him. Nestorians differed in their position, but their official position was not always heretical.

Nestor was part of the Antioch Syria School of theology. This school was humanistic. They were semi-Pelagian. They did not see human nature as fully corrupted. They emphasised the humanity of Jesus. They were literal in their interpretation of the Bible, in opposition to the allegorical hermeneutics of the ascetic monasteries of North Africa.

In their humanist approach they sought to demystify all mysteries, such as the nature of Christ. How the human and divine can be one person in Christ is beyond human reason. Demystifying God is really an attack on faith. Nestorians also applied this to the communion, holding that the bread and wine were symbolic only.

In the 16th Century Luther rejected this, saying we must not deny what the Bible states and that Christ is present in the communion in a mystery. Science wants to see the chemical structure of the bread and would demand the same in relation to the claim that “Christ is in us”. For Luther, authority was in faith. The trinity, the nature of Christ, election and even water baptism (which is just water, but also the answer of a good conscience) are mysteries (1 Pet 3:21).

Their humanistic approach lent the Nestorian movement to syncretism in their missionary endeavours. Syncretism means that the gospel is adapted in line with human meanings found in local cultures. Though the Nestorians reached many nations in mission, in most places they so mixed the gospel with human values for ready acceptance that the church eventually died out.

The Roman position on the Nestorian dispute was that Christ had the two natures in one substance or person. It is difficult to know what this means, unless it was a compromise between Nestorianism and the African position. It seems to us that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, in one nature, for how can a person have two natures? It is a mystery, but we accept it on faith, because the scripture teaches it.

And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. (1 Tim 3:16).

The humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ are indivisible in one person and one nature. The Arians arose in the 4th Century, saying that Christ was only human. This claim was also made by the liberal heretics of the 19th Century, who denied the miraculous, the spirit world and eternal life. Much of the Western mindset today is rationalistic, extending from the humanism of Nestorianism.