Jesus Christ: incarnation, death and resurrection

The Christological councils were not clarifying a technicality. They were asking what actually happened in Christ, and therefore what has happened to human nature.

Ephesus and the Theotokos

Nestorius objected to calling the Virgin Mary theotokos, God-bearer, preferring Christ-bearer. Cyril of Alexandria answered that refusing the title amounts to denying that the one born of Mary is the eternal Son. The Council of Ephesus in 431 confessed the title.

The point is Christological before it is Marian. Either the child in Bethlehem is the Word made flesh, or he is a man in whom God came to dwell. The title marks which.

Chalcedon and the four adverbs

Chalcedon in 451 confessed one and the same Christ, made known in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. Two of those adverbs guard against confusing the natures, which was Eutyches's error; two guard against dividing the one Christ.

The definition explains nothing. It draws a boundary and says: speak inside this. That restraint is itself a theological judgement about what human language can do here.

Constantinople III and the two wills

Two and a half centuries later the question returned in a different form: does Christ have one will or two? Monothelitism, the one-will formula, was politically attractive as a basis for reunion with the non-Chalcedonian churches.

Maximus the Confessor argued that will belongs to nature, not to person. Two natures means two natural wills — a divine will and a human will that follows it freely, without opposition. If Christ had no human will, human willing would be unhealed. The Sixth Council confessed this in 681, nineteen years after Maximus died in exile for holding it.

Key Scripture

• John 1:14 — The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
• Philippians 2:5-11 — The self-emptying of the Son, taking the form of a servant.
• Luke 22:42 — Not my will but yours be done — the passage the two-wills argument turns on.
• Hebrews 4:15 — Tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.

On Scripture references. References are given so you can read the passage in the translation your parish uses. This site does not reproduce a modern copyrighted Bible text.

Council and canon connections

• Ephesus, 431: the Theotokos and the condemnation of Nestorius.
• Chalcedon, 451: the definition of two natures in one person.
• Constantinople, 681: two natural wills and two natural operations.

Why this matters in lived Orthodoxy

This is the doctrine behind everything the Church does with matter. If God has taken flesh, then water can baptise, bread and wine can be his body and blood, oil can heal, and wood and paint can carry an image that is venerated.

It is also the doctrine behind Orthodox hope for the body. What is confessed of Christ's humanity is confessed of the destiny of ours.

Review

Going deeper

• The Definition of Faith of Chalcedon, archived in full.
• The Tome of Leo, archived in full.
• Cyril's twelve anathematisms, with the caution on the page about how to read them.