The Hypostatic Union : Problems with the Duality of Christ in Christendom
By Bro. Nathan
"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross." (Phil. 2:5-8) NRSV
God
1. Uncreated 2. Incorporeal 3. Omniscient 4. Omnipotent 5. Omnipresent 6. Immortal
Man
1. Created 2. Corporeal 3. Not Omniscient (may limited knowledge) 5. Not Omnipotent (may limitations) 5. Not Omnipresent 6. Mortal
"Consider the following:(A) God is essentially omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and uncreated;(B) Jesus Christ was and is fully God;(C) Jesus Christ was and is fully human;(D) Necessarily, no human is omnipotent or omnipresent or uncreated.Given the foregoing premises, there is an inconsistency in asserting that teach of these premises is true. The affirmation of any three of these premises entails the denial of the fourth--at least if premises (B) and (C) are understood as identity statements. Do not the affirmation (A), (B), and (D) entail Docetism or the assertion that Christ is not human? Do not (A) and (D) entail Arianism in the sense that Christ is not fully God? Do not the affirmation of (B), (C) and (D) entail that God is not omnipotent or omnipresent and thus not really God? Do not (A), (B) and (C) entail that humans are omnipotent and omnipresent--a claim so obviously absurd that no one has seriously promoted it?" (Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, volume 1: The Attributes of God [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2001], 419-21)
Furthermore, Thomas N. Hart wrote :
" The Chalcedonian formula makes a genuine humanity impossible. The conciliar definition says that Jesus is true man. But if there are two natures in him, it is clear which will dominate. And Jesus becomes immediately very different from us. He is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. He knows past, present, and future, and enjoys the unbroken vision of God, He knows exactly what everyone is thinking and going to do. This is far from ordinary human experience. Jesus is tempted, but cannot sin because he is God. What kind of temptation is this? Can it be called temptation at all? It has little in common with the kinds of struggles we are familiar with. These difficulties flow from the divinity overshadowing the humanity, and from Jesus not having a human personal center.
The formula explicitly assigns Jesus a human nature, and all Christians confess that Jesus is truly man as well as truly God. But if we consult our mage of him, we recognize that we see him as a divine rather than a human being. His outward appearance is human, but his inner life is very different. He has a human body, and he eats, sleeps, and talks like a human person. But things are quite different within, where the self-consciousness is all that of God. Is it having a body, and eating and sleeping, that constitute a human being? What contemporary theologians are saying is that it is precisely the “innards” of a person that bear the distinctive marks of a human nature. The Anglican theologian John Knox puts this matter particularly well. To be human is to be inwardly human, and that is to be limited in knowledge, not to know the future, not to know what is inside others but only to be able to intuit or guess. To be inwardly human is to wonder who one is and what one is supposed to do with one’s life, and to carry that question with varying degrees of acuity all through one’s existence. To be human is to struggle with God, to be aware of God as present to oneself at times, but to know times too when God seems to be absent and out of reach. To be human is to unfold step by step in the recognition and realization of one’s authentic self-hood (which includes one’s vocation), not to possess it all at once from the beginning. Can Jesus be true God and at the same time be truly human in these essential ways?
We can see the same difficulty if we consider our living of the Christian life. The Christian spirituality that follows from Chalcedon has always been strong in this respect, that it brings God nearer, in Jesus, and so facilitates our relating to God. But in another respect, this spirituality has always been weak. We cannot identify with this Jesus. He is not just superior to us, the way St. Francis of Assisi was superior to most of us; he is different. He has not struggled in the mire of life the way we have to. So if we say to someone who is struggling to integrate his sexuality into responsible loving: “You know, Jesus had to struggle with this too,” the person will probably respond: “What makes you think that? He was God.” And if we say to the patient dying a painful death, with much fear and little sense of the presence of God: “It was in circumstances just like this, and with very similar feelings, that Jesus died,” the patient will probably reply: “I know he suffered a lot. But he knew he was God and he knew he would rise again.” If we try to console the person whose spouse has had an affair, who has been deeply wounded and cannot find it in her heart to forgive or trust again, and we say: “You know, Jesus didn’t just talk about forgiving; he suffered some terrible hurts and betrayals from those who were closest, and had to struggle just as you do to forgive, and trust them again,” the person’s likely reply would be: “But he was so different, and his whole life so different, that I just can’t relate to what you are saying.” In other words, Jesus is human in a way, but not in the way we are. And yet does not Hebrews say of him: “Since he was himself tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are tempted” (Heb 2:18)?"(Thomas N. Hart, To Know and Follow Jesus: Contemporary Christology [New York: Paulist Press, 1984], 46-48)
Lucien J. Richard wrote :
"Chalcedon and the Doctrine of the Hypostatic UnionLater Christologies such as that of Cyril of Alexandria affirms the full humanity of Jesus while maintaining the impassibility and immutability of the divine Logos. The subject of suffering is the human Jesus. There is a risk here of loosening the intimate link between the divine Logos and human nature of Jesus. In expressing the nature of the Incarnation, Cyril used the phrase “hypostatic union.” Cyril rites: “We believe therefore, not in one like us honoured with Godhead by grace . . . but rather in the Lord who appeared in servant’s form and Who was truly like us and in human nature, yet remained God, for God the Word, when he took flesh, laid not down what he was, but is conceived of the Same God alike and man” (Cyril of Alexandria, “Scholia on the Incarnation,” in Five Tomes Against Nestorius, ed. E.B. Posey, [Oxford: James Parrer and Co., 1881] 12, p. 197). The two natures, divine and human, are so united in Jesus that we may speak of one Person. Because of this unity we may speak in such terms as God suffered, God died, Yet the Logos remains in his own nature impassible; he remains “. . . external to suffering as far as pertains to His own Nature, for God is Impassible” (Ibid., 13, p. 202). Cyril must simultaneously affirm the impassibility of the Logos and the suffering of the Logos have effected redemption. The Logos suffered in the human flesh and since this flesh is the Logos’ very own the Logos suffered, but impassibly. Cyril’s difficulties with this question of Jesus’ suffering and divinity can be seen in the following quotation:
And though Jesus be said also to suffer, the suffering will belong to the economy; but is said to be His, and with all reason, because His to is that which suffered, and he was in the suffering Body, He unknowing to suffer (for He is impassible as God); yet as far as pertained to the daring of those who raged against Him, He would have suffered, if he could
have suffered. (Ibid.)
In Cyril’s doctrine on the Incarnation, we have a clear expression of the difficulties inherent in accepting an understanding of God as changeless, eternal and impassible, of identifying the Logos to such a God and of attempting to attribute real suffering to the incarnated Logos. The Logos is sympathetic to the suffering of the flesh, but does not suffer himself. The divine in Christ is untouched by the suffering of his human nature. Instead of being affected by becoming flesh, the divine Logos imparts its attributes to the human nature. There is a deification of the human, but no humanization of the divine.
Hilary presses the idea of impassibility to a point where the exemplary nature of Christ’s experience in His human nature almost completely disappears. Writing about the Logos’ human nature, Hilary affirms “When, in this humanity, He was struck with blows, or smitten with wounds, or bound with ropes, or lifted on high, He felt the force of suffering, but without its pain . . . He had a body to suffer, and he suffered: but He had not a nature which could feel pain. For His body possessed a unique nature of its own” (St. Hilary, On the Trinity X, 23). In fact, Hilary believes that Jesus Christ never needed to satisfy bodily longings. He writes, “ . . . it is never said that the Lord ate or drank or wept when he was hungry or sorrowful. He conformed to the habits of the body to prove the reality of his own body, to satisfy the custom of human bodies, by doing as our nature does. When he ate and drank, it was a concession, not to his own necessity but to our habits” (Ibid., X, 24). This approach seems to evacuate the Passion narratives of their force: suffering undertaken for the sake of men and women yet without pain is not suffering. (Lucien J. Richard, A Kenotic Christology: In the Humanity of Jesus the Christ, the Compassion of Our God [Lanham, Md. : University Press of America, 1982], 140-42)
In contrast to Trinitarian Christology, Latter Day Saints believe that Jesus Christ is also God and man but when he was incarnated, he emptied divine qualities that are incompatible to humanity and retained some qualities essential in being in the state of God. Jesus Christ emptied himself fully that he might suffer and die for us (Phil. 2:5-11; Heb. 2:7-9). Jesus also progressed and grew and learned from his experiential knowledge and he became perfected (Lk. 2:52; 13:32; Heb. 2:10-18; 5:8-9). Jesus Christ also came down here on heart to help us in our progression to divinity that we might also become perfect as he is. with Latter Day Saint Christology, Christ being both God and man makes more logical sense.
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