Jesus Christ, True God and True Man

Jesus Christ took on human nature without ceasing to be God. He is true

God and true Man.

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1. The Incarnation of the Word
But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of
woman (Gal 4:4). Thus the promise of a Saviour that God had made to Adam and
Eve as they were expelled from Paradise was fulfilled: I will put enmity between
you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your
head and you shall bruise his heel (Gen 3:15). This verse from Genesis is
sometimes called the “proto-gospel" or first gospel, because it is the first
announcement of the good news of salvation. The traditional interpretation is
that the “woman" of whom it speaks is both Eve, in a direct sense, and Mary in
the full sense; and that the “seed" of the woman refers both to mankind and to
Christ.
From then until the moment when the word became flesh and dwelt among
us (Jn 1:14), God was preparing mankind to welcome his only-begotten Son. God
chose the people of Israel for himself, established his Covenant with them, and
formed them progressively, intervening in their history, telling them his plans
through the patriarchs and prophets, and sanctifying them for himself. All this
was a preparation and figure of the new and perfect Covenant that was to be
forged in Christ, and of the full and definitive revelation that was to be brought
about by the Incarnate Word himself.[1] Although God prepared the coming of
the Saviour above all by choosing the people of Israel, this does not mean that he
abandoned other people, “the Gentiles," for he never ceased giving them
testimony of himself (cf. Acts 14:16-17). Divine providence ensured that the
Gentiles had some degree of awareness of the need for salvation, and the desire to
be redeemed stretched to the very ends of the earth.
The origin of the Incarnation is God's love for mankind. In this the love of God
was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that
we might live through him ( 1 Jn 4:9). The Incarnation is the supreme sign of
God's love for us, since God gives himself to us through the Second Person of the
Blessed Trinity coming to share in our human nature in the unity of the Son's
divine Person.
After the fall of Adam and Eve in paradise, the Incarnation has a saving and
redemptive purpose, as we profess in the Creed. “For us men and for our
salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born
of the Virgin Mary, and became man." [2] Christ said of himself that the Son of
man came to seek and to save what was lost ( Lk 19:10; cf. Mt 18:11), and
that God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the
world might be saved by him ( Jn 3:17).

The Incarnation not only shows God's infinite love for mankind, his infinite
mercy, justice and power, but also the divine wisdom shown in the way God
decided to save man, which is the way that was most appropriate to human
nature: through the Incarnation of the Word.

Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, “is not a myth, or an abstract idea; he is a man
who lived in a specific context and who died after a life spent on earth in the
course of history. Historical research about him is, therefore, required by
Christian faith." [3]
That Christ existed belongs to the doctrine of faith, as also that he really died for
us and rose on the third day (cf. 1 Cor 15:3-11). Christ's existence is a fact proved
by history, particularly by the analysis of the New Testament, whose historical
value is beyond doubt. We have other ancient non-Christian testimonies, both
pagan and Jewish, about Christ's life. Precisely because of this we cannot accept
the position of those who set up a “historical Jesus" in opposition to the “Christ of
faith," and who defend the supposition that almost everything the New
Testament says about Christ is an interpretation of faith made by Jesus' disciples,
but not his true historical figure, which remains hidden from us. These points of
view, which often include a strong prejudice against anything supernatural, fail to
account for the fact, confirmed by contemporary historical research, that the
representation of Christ offered by early Christian witnesses is underpinned by
events that really took place.
2. Jesus Christ, true God and true man

The Incarnation “is the mystery of the wonderful union of the divine and human
natures in the one person of the Word" (CCC, 483). The Incarnation of the Son of
God “does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply
that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He
became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true
man" (CCC, 464). The divinity of Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God, was dealt
with in summary no. 5 on the Blessed Trinity. Here we will focus primarily on his
humanity.

The Church defended and clarified this truth of faith during the first centuries
against the heresies which denied or misrepresented it. As far back as the first
century some Christians of Jewish origin, the Ebionites, held that Christ was
simply a man, although a very holy man. “Adoptionism" arose in the second
century, maintaining that Jesus was the adopted son of God: that Jesus was only
a man in whom God's strength dwelt. According to this heresy, God was one
single person. It was condemned by Pope St Victor in 190 A.D., by the Council of
Antioch in 268, by the First Council of Constantinople and by the Roman Synod
of 382. [4] The Arian heresy, by denying the divinity of the Word, also denied
that Jesus Christ was God. Arius was condemned by the Council of Nicaea in the
year 325. Today the Church has again reminded us that Jesus Christ is the Son of
God subsistent from all eternity and that in the Incarnation he assumed human
nature in his one divine Person.[5]
The Church also confronted other errors that denied the reality of Christ's human
nature. These included heresies that rejected the reality of Christ's body or of his
soul. Amongst the former were various forms of docetism, which has a Gnostic
and Manichean background. Some of its followers held that Christ had a celestial
body, or that his body was merely apparent, or that he suddenly appeared in
Judaea without having been born or grown up. St John already had to combat
this error: for many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not
acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh ( 2 Jn 7; cf. 1 Jn 4:1-1).
Arius and Apollinarius of Laodicea denied that Christ had a true human soul. The
latter was particularly important in spreading this error and his influence was felt
for several centuries in the later Christological controversies. In an attempt to
defend Christ's unity and impeccability, Apollinarius maintained that the Word
fulfilled the functions of the human spiritual soul. This doctrine, however, meant
a denial of Christ's true humanity, composed, as in all men, of body and spiritual
soul (cf. CCC 471). He was condemned in the First Council of Constantinople and
the Roman Synod of 382. [6]
3. The Hypostatic Union
At the beginning of the fifth century, after the preceding controversies, there was
a clear need to firmly defend the integrity of the two natures, human and divine,
in the one Person of the Word. Thus the personal unity of Christ became the
centre of attention of patristic Christology and soteriology. New discussions
contributed to this new depth of understanding.

The first great controversy originated with some statements by Nestorius,

patriarch of Constantinople, who implied that in Christ there are two subjects:
the divine subject and the human subject, united by a moral bond, but not
physically. This Christological error was the origin of his rejection of the title of
Mother of God, Theotókos, applied to our Lady. According to his view, Mary
would be the Mother of Christ, but not the Mother of God. Against this heresy, St
Cyril of Alexandria and the Council of Ephesus in 431 stressed that “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" (CCC, 466; DS 250 and 252).
Some years later the Monophysite heresy arose. This heresy has antecedents in
Apollinarianism and a misunderstanding of St. Cyril's teaching and language by
Eutyches, an elderly archimandrite in a monastery in Constantinople. Eutyches
affirmed, amongst other things, that Christ was a Person who subsisted in a
single nature, since his human nature would have been absorbed into his divine
nature. This error was condemned by Pope Leo the Great, in his Tomus ad
Flavianum,[7] a real jewel of Latin theology, and by the Ecumenical Council of
Chalcedon in 451, a necessary reference-point for Christology. This Council
teaches that “we confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: perfect in
divinity and perfect in humanity."[8] It adds that the union of the two natures is
“without confusion, change, division or separation." [9]
The doctrine of Chalcedon was confirmed and clarified in the year 553 by the
Second Council of Constantinople, which offered an authentic interpretation of
the previous Council. After repeatedly emphasising the unity of Christ, [10] it
affirmed that the union of the two natures in Christ takes place by
hypostasis. [11] In this way it overcame the ambiguity of St Cyril's formula, which
spoke of unity according to “ physis. " The Second Council of Constantinople also
indicated the true sense of St Cyril's well-known formula, “one incarnate nature
of the Word of God" [12] (a phrase that St Cyril thought came from St Athanasius,
but which was in fact an Apollinarian falsification).

In these conciliar definitions, which aimed to clarify specific errors and not to
expound the mystery of Christ in its totality, the Council Fathers used the
language of their time. Just as Nicaea used the term “consubstantial," Chalcedon
used terms such as nature, person, hypostasis, etc., following the usual meaning
that they had in ordinary language and in the theology of the time. This does not
mean, as some have affirmed, that the Gospel message became hellenised. In
reality, those who showed themselves to be rigidly hellenist were precisely those
who proposed heretical doctrines, such as Arius or Nestorius, who could not see
the limitations of the philosophical language of their time when trying to describe
the mystery of God and of Christ.

4. Christ's Sacred Humanity

“In the Incarnation 'human nature was assumed, not absorbed' (GS 22, 2)" (CCC,
470). Therefore the Church defends “the full reality of Christ's human soul, with
its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she
had to recall on each occasion that Christ's human nature belongs, as his own, to
the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is
and does in this nature derives from 'one of the Trinity.' The Son of God therefore
communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity.
In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the
Trinity (cf. Jn 14:9-10)" (CCC, 470).
Christ's human soul possesses true human knowledge. Catholic doctrine has
traditionally taught that, as man, Christ possessed acquired knowledge, infused
knowledge, and the knowledge proper to the blessed in heaven. Christ's acquired
knowledge could not in itself be unlimited. “This is why the Son of God could,
when he became man, 'increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God
and man' (Lk 2:52), and would even have to inquire for himself about what one in
the human condition can learn only from experience (cf. Mk 6:38;
8:27; Jn 11:34)" (CCC, 472). Christ, in whom the fullness of the Holy Spirit dwells
with his gifts (cf. Is 11:1-3), also possesses infused knowledge, that is, knowledge
that is not acquired directly by the work of the reason, but is infused directly by
God in the human intellect. Thus, “the Son in his human knowledge also showed
the divine penetration he had into the secret thoughts of human hearts
(cf. Mk 2:8; Jn 2:25; 6:61)" (CCC, 473). Christ also possesses the knowledge
proper to the blessed: “By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the
Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of
understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal (cf. Mk 8:31; 9:31;
10:33-34; 14:18-20, 26-30)" (CCC 474).
For all these reasons it must be stated that Christ as man is infallible: to admit
error in him would be to admit it in the Word, the one Person existing in Christ.
With regard to ignorance as such, we have to bear in mind that “what he admitted
to not knowing in this area, he elsewhere declared himself not sent to reveal
(cf. Acts 1:7)" (CCC, 474). We can understand that, on the human plane, Christ
was aware of being the Word and of his saving mission. [13] On the other hand,
Catholic theology, in view of the fact that while on earth Christ already possessed
the immediate vision of God, has always denied that the virtue of faith existed in
Christ. [14]
Against the monoenergetic and monothelitic heresies which, following logically
from the preceding monophysicism, affirmed that in Christ there is a single
operation or a single will, the Church confessed in the third Ecumenical Council
of Constantinople, in the year 681, that “Christ possesses two wills and two
natural operations, divine and human. They are not opposed to each other, but
co-operate in such a way that the Word made flesh willed humanly in obedience
to his Father all that he had decided divinely with the Father and the Holy Spirit
for our salvation (cf. DS 556-559). Christ's human will 'does not resist or oppose
but rather submits to his divine and almighty will' (DS 556)" (CCC, 475). This is a
fundamental question, since it relates directly to Christ's own being and to our
salvation. St Maximus the Confessor was outstanding in his efforts to clarify this
doctrine, making very effective use of the well-known passage of Jesus' prayer in
the Garden of Olives, which shows the agreement of Christ's human will with the
Father's will (cf. Mt 26:39).

A consequence of the duality of natures is also the duality of operations in Christ:

the divine operations (or actions) that proceed from his divine nature, and the
human operations that proceed from his human nature. We can also speak of
theandric operations to refer to those in which the human action serves as an
instrument of the divine; this is the case of the miracles worked by Christ.

The reality of Incarnation of the Word was also clarified in the last great
Christological controversy of the patristic period: the dispute over images. The
custom of representing Christ in frescos, icons, bas-reliefs, etc., is very ancient,
going back at least to the second century. The iconoclast crisis in Constantinople
at the beginning of the eighth century began with a decree by the Emperor. For
centuries, theologians had shown themselves to be for or against the use of
images, but both positions had co-existed peacefully. Those who were against
images held that God's infinity cannot be enclosed or circumscribed within a
limited painting. However, as St John Damascene stressed, the Incarnation itself
circumscribed the “incircumscribable" Word. “Since the Word became flesh in
assuming a true human nature, Christ's body was finite. Therefore the human
face of Jesus can be portrayed (cf. Gal 3:1)" (CCC, 476). At the second ecumenical
Council of Nicaea in the year 787, “the Church recognised its representation in
holy images to be legitimate" (CCC, 476). Indeed, “the individual particularities of
Christ's body express the divine Person of the Son of God. He has made his own
the features of his own human body to the extent that, painted on a sacred image,
they may be venerated because the believer who venerates his image, venerates
the Person it represents." [15]
Christ's soul, since it was not essentially divine, but human, was perfected, like
the souls of the rest of men, by means of habitual grace, which is a “habitual gift,
a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to
live with God, to act by his love" (CCC, 2000). Christ is holy, as the archangel
Gabriel announced to Mary at the Annunciation (cf. Lk 1:35). Christ's humanity is
radically holy, the source and model of the holiness of all men. Through the
Incarnation, Christ's human nature was elevated to the greatest unity with the
divinity—with the Person of the Word—to which any creature can be raised. From
the point of view of Christ's humanity, the hypostatic union is the greatest gift
one could receive, and is generally known as the grace of union. Through
sanctifying grace, Christ's soul was divinised by the transformation that raises the
operations of the soul to the plane of the intimate life of God, giving to its
supernatural operations a co-naturalness that it would not otherwise have
possessed. His fullness of grace also implies the existence of the infused virtues
and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
From Christ's fullness of grace we all received grace upon grace (Jn 1:16). This
grace and these gifts are bestowed upon Christ not only in accordance with his
dignity as Son, but also in accordance with his mission as the new Adam and
Head of the Church. This why we speak about a “capital" grace in Christ, which is
not separate from Christ's personal grace but which highlights his sanctifying
action on the members of the Church. For the Church “is the Body of Christ"
(CCC, 805), a Body “of which Christ is the Head; she lives from him, in him and
for him; he lives with her and in her" (CCC, 807).
The Heart of the Incarnate Word: “Jesus knew and loved us each and all during
his life, his agony and his Passion, and gave himself up for each one of us: 'The
Son of God… loved me and gave himself for me' ( Gal 20:2). He has loved us all
with a human heart" (CCC, 478). Hence the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the perfect
symbol of the love with which he continually loves the eternal Father and all men
and women (cf. ibid. ).