Adapted from the Greek of Andreas Theodorou, Απαντήσεις σε ερωτήματα συμβολικά (Answers to Questions in Comparative Theology), published by Apostoliki Diakonia of the Church of Greece. This English presentation has been edited for parish reading.
Truly God and Truly Man
What Is at the Heart of Orthodox Christology?
The doctrine concerning Christ is just as important as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is one of the highest doctrines of the faith, and in it we see the Triune God as He acts in relation to the world—in the creation of the world and in its redemption.
The Word of God, who within the eternal Trinity is related to the divine essence and to the other two Persons of the Godhead, leaves the heavens—without losing anything of His divine dignity—and comes down to earth. He enters human history and becomes man in order to save fallen humanity from sin.
This entrance of the Word into human life and His voluntary acceptance of the suffering belonging to our historical condition is known as the kenosis, or self-emptying, of the Word.⁶⁸
The Word becomes man in order to free humanity from the yoke of sin and from the suffering of spiritual death.
Two Natures and One Person
In Christ there are two natures, the divine and the human, and one Person, the Person of the eternal Word.
His human nature did not possess a separate person of its own; it was anhypostatic, that is, it did not exist as an independent human person apart from the Person of the Word.
Christ’s divine nature was the complete and perfect nature of God. His human nature was likewise complete and perfect. It possessed a rational and intelligent human soul united to a true, material human body.
The union of the two natures took place in the womb of the Virgin from the very first moment of conception.
As soon as Mary received the greeting of the angel, the Spirit of God formed in her virginal womb the human reality of Christ, and the Word of God was immediately united with it.
The human nature that was united to the Word did not exist for even a single moment outside this union as a separate and independent person.
Therefore, as man, Christ did not possess another, separate human person. His humanity existed in the eternal Person of the Word.
The Supernatural Conception and Birth of Christ
The conception and birth of Christ were supernatural.
The ordinary laws of nature did not operate in them in the usual way.
Mary did not conceive through the normal union of a man and a woman, but through the creative activity of the All-Holy Spirit.
Christ was “without a father from His mother”—that is, He had no human father who was the husband of His mother.
Since no man participated in His conception, Mary conceived Christ without losing her virginity.
In the same way, the birth of the Lord was virginal and supernatural. The text describes it as a birth without pain and without the ordinary physical consequences of childbirth.
The birth of the Savior did not follow the ordinary course of natural human birth.
For this reason, He was born without the ancestral sin with which all other human beings enter the world.
In Christ, the continuity of the fallen nature of Adam was broken—the fallen condition that passes ancestral sin to those who descend from Adam.
Christ is the New Adam of grace, the new spiritual root of humanity, from whom spiritual rebirth and salvation are given to those who believe.
How Are the Divine and Human Natures United in Christ?
The union of the two natures in Christ is hypostatic, without confusion, and without division.
By hypostatic union we mean that the union takes place in the hypostasis, or Person, of the Word.
Again, Christ’s human nature was anhypostatic in the sense that it never lived independently, outside the Person of Christ.
This is extremely important.
In their union, the two natures did not alter one another.
The divine nature did not become human, and the human nature did not become divine in its natural qualities.
Each nature remained complete and preserved its own proper qualities, while from the moment of their union they were never again separated.
They were united:
“without change, without confusion, without division, without separation.”⁶⁹
The Two Wills and Two Energies of Christ
Christ possessed two natural wills and two natural energies, corresponding to His two natures.
He willed and acted in unity both as man and as God.
His human will, although truly free, was subject to His divine will without struggling against it or opposing it.⁷⁰
Christ did not possess a separate gnomic will—that is, He did not will as though He were a separate human person independently deciding in opposition to His divine Person. Such a view would presuppose a separate human person in Christ and would leave open the possibility that the Lord could fall into sin.
The same is true of Christ’s energies.
Christ acted in unity in both His divine and human actions, without one activity opposing the other.
What Follows from the Union of God and Man in Christ?
From the composition of the divine-human Person of Christ follow several important truths.
1. The Communication of the Properties of the Two Natures
The properties of the two natures are communicated in the one Person of Christ.
The characteristics belonging to the two natures are not transferred directly from one nature to the other in such a way that the natures themselves become confused. If that happened, the distinction between the divine and human natures would be destroyed and we would arrive at Monophysitism.
Rather, the communication takes place strictly in the one divine-human Person of Christ.
Thus, we do not say that the divine nature itself suffered, nor that human nature by itself existed in heaven before the creation of the world.
Instead, we say that Christ, as the one and indivisible Person, suffered as God—naturally, in His flesh—and that Christ as man was in heaven.
In the communication of properties, it is especially the divine nature that communicates its properties to the human nature, rather than the reverse.
This aspect of the doctrine is extremely important because it serves as a standard by which Christological errors and heresies can be recognized and evaluated.
2. Why Mary Is Called Theotokos
Another consequence is the title Theotokos, given to the Mother of Christ.
Mary gave birth to Christ.
Of course, she did not give birth to His divine nature considered by itself, because God, as the infinite and perfect Being, cannot be subjected to natural laws and cannot be born in the same way human beings are born.
Mary gave birth to God in the flesh.
The One who was born from her was Christ, in whom perfect God was united, from the very first moment of conception, with true humanity in the womb of the most pure Virgin.
The title Theotokos is therefore a concise expression of the whole Christological doctrine.
It became like a breakwater against which the storm of Nestorianism struck and was broken apart.
3. Christ Has One Sonship and Receives One Worship
Christ has a twofold birth.
One is His birth as the Son of God.
The other is His birth as the Son of the Virgin.
The first is His eternal generation from the Father, which is the personal characteristic of the Word.
The second took place in time, from the Virgin, through the power of the All-Holy Spirit.
These two births are clearly distinct from one another.
But Christ does not therefore possess two separate sonships.
He is not separately the Son of God and separately the Son of the Virgin.
If that were so, He would possess two persons—one as God and another as man.
But this is not the case.
As we have said, Christ possesses one Person. He is one, not many.
Because He is one Person, He has one sonship.
The same Christ is both God and man.
There are not two separate sons in Him, as Nestorius taught.
And corresponding to the one sonship of Christ there is also one worship and one adoration offered to Him.
4. The Absolute Sinlessness of Christ
Another consequence is the absolute sinlessness of Christ.
Christ not only did not sin during His earthly life,⁷¹ but He could not sin (non potuit peccare).
This follows from the constitution of His Person.
He could not sin because He was not merely a human being, but the God-man.
The idea that the Lord could have sinned would divide His one Person into two natural persons and would therefore destroy the Christological mystery.
The idea is unacceptable.
If we were to suppose that Christ, as man, could sin, then God united with Him could also be implicated in that sin—an idea the text describes as impious and blasphemous.
What Is Meant by the Deification of Christ’s Human Nature?
The deification of Christ’s human nature is a result of the hypostatic union of the two natures, and more specifically of the communication of their properties in the Person of the Word of God.
Christ’s human nature receives the glories of divinity, becomes a participant in the divine nature, and is deified.
On the basis of this deification, all those who believe in Christ are also given the possibility of deification.⁷² They are mystically incorporated into His human nature through Baptism.
A traditional example used to explain this deification is iron heated in fire.
The fire does not lose its natural qualities.
The iron does not lose its natural qualities.
Yet the two become so deeply united that they cannot easily be separated from one another.
In the same way, human nature is penetrated by the fire of divine energy without being separated from it.
Human nature, however, is not destroyed.
It is not absorbed.
It is not dissolved pantheistically into the divine nature, as certain heretics, particularly the Monophysites, would later teach.
What Influence Did the Schools of Alexandria and Antioch Have on Christological Heresies?
The ancient School of Alexandria had particular theological tendencies and presuppositions.
Its theologians tended to emphasize more strongly the divine element in Christ, while leaving His human element somewhat in the background.
They likewise interpreted Scripture allegorically, seeing symbolic meanings in many biblical narratives, while giving less attention to the historical and grammatical interpretation of the biblical text.
From within these tendencies arose heretical teachings that denied either the reality or the completeness of Christ’s human nature.
Among them were the:
Docetists,
Apollinarians,
Monophysites,
and Aphthartodocetists.⁷³
At the opposite extreme stood the School of Antioch.
Its theologians had more practical tendencies.
They emphasized more strongly the human element in Christ and tended to leave the divine element in the background.
The Antiochian theologians interpreted Scripture using the historical-grammatical method and rejected allegorical interpretation.
From the tendencies of this school arose Nestorianism.
How Did Heretics Arrive at Their False Teachings?
They arrived at them through their effort to understand and explain by human reason things that are incomprehensible and ultimately beyond explanation.
The doctrines of the faith concern mysterious truths that surpass human comprehension.
A human being, using the mind alone, is unable to reach them.
Only through faith illumined by the Spirit of God⁷⁴ can a person gain some access to the mystery of God.
Without this illumination, the human mind attempts the impossible.
It tries to contain within itself the infinite and incomprehensible God.
This is what happened to the heretics.
Trusting in their own human powers, they attempted to comprehend the transcendent truth of God.
But the task was unequal, just as the relationship between the created and the uncreated, and between the finite and the infinite, is unequal.
Failing to recognize this immeasurable difference, and approaching the mysteries with self-centeredness and pride, instead of properly interpreting the doctrines they distorted and dismantled them.
Carried along only by natural human reasoning, they did not reach the end of the road. They wandered from the path and became lost.
Being proud and contentious, they also created factions within the Church and caused immense harm to her life.
They destroyed love, unity, and the peaceful life of the Body of Christ.⁷⁵
Heresies are the Church’s worst enemy—the weeds that the enemy sows in the field of the divine Kingdom.
What Is the Christological Problem?
The Christological problem consists in understanding the composition of the divine-human Person of Christ, in whom two different natures are united without either one harming or destroying the other.
The mystery is great.
We cannot understand how Christ could possess two complete and whole natures and yet have only one Person, who is the single bearer of all His divine-human actions.
Nor can we comprehend how one nature, although complete and whole, can at the same time exist without a separate person of its own and receive its personal existence in the Person of another nature—what theology calls enhypostatic existence.⁷⁶
These are mysteries and apparent antinomies that our limited human reasoning cannot reconcile.
No human wisdom can fully illuminate and explain the profound mystery of Christ.
Many attempt to pass through the mysterious veil surrounding it.
Few, however, emerge bearing the radiance of grace.
Most remain within the darkness of human understanding, struggling before the infinity of this wonder that surpasses reason.
As the God-receiver Simeon said, Christ “is set for the fall and rising of many.”⁷⁷
He is the great stumbling block: He raises some up and brings them into the brightness of the divine Kingdom, while others are cast into the darkness of spiritual destruction.
Source: Andreas Theodorou, Απαντήσεις σε ερωτήματα συμβολικά, Basic Dogmatic Teaching, vol. 5, 2nd edition (Athens: Apostoliki Diakonia, 2006), chapter V, “Christology,” questions 66–78, pp. 91–110. Reference numbers below follow the Greek source; Scripture-reference errors have been corrected. Comparative passages are presented as historical theological discussion, not as a description of every contemporary Christian community.
References in the Original Text
68. Philippians 2:6–7: Christ, “being in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men…”
69. Definition of the Fourth Ecumenical Council.
70. See the definition of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
71. 1 Peter 2:22.
72. 2 Peter 1:4.
73. A. Theodorou, The Influence of Greek Thought on the Theological Schools of Alexandria and Antioch, Athens, 1983.
74. That is, to have the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).
75. From this perspective, the text explains the zeal with which the Apostle Paul fought the heresies of his time.
76. A philosophical term used by Leontius of Byzantium in his successful treatment of the Christological problem.
77. Luke 2:34.
