Last week we considered the Incarnation of Jesus Christ especially in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity.
We said that the Incarnation is a fine example of the Christian faith inasmuch as in Christianity as in the Incarnation we find that God condescends to man since man cannot rise to God.
We noted that the word incarnation simply means that in Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, took on human form – being miraculously conceived and born of a virgin.
We pursued the idea that the incarnation is the central fact of the entire history of the world so much so that time can be measured as “Before Christ,” and “Anno Domini” in the year of our Lord.
We noted that the Incarnation proclaims plurality in the one God inasmuch as Jesus was and remains very God of very God. We noted that in the Incarnation the preexistent Christ was sent by the Father and was conceived by the Holy Ghost underscoring again the Trinitarian nature of Christianity.
In the Doctrine of the Trinity therefore God eternally exists as three distinct persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the one being of God.
We examined the idea that the incarnation is distinctly Christian as a doctrine because no other belief system can provide the possibility of an incarnation. We looked at the three possibilities for religions (Deism, Pantheism, and Christianity) and saw that Christianity is Christianity, in part, because it alone provides an Incarnation.
And then we spent just a wee bit of time considering the role/work of each member of the Trinity in the Incarnation considering some of the teachings of Scripture on that subject.
We concluded that the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity implies one another and depend upon one another.
This week we want to consider the proper way to think about the Incarnation of the preexistent Christ so that we don’t fall into heresy in our Christology – in our doctrine of Christ.
The Church thought getting the incarnation was so important that it spent hundreds and hundreds of years getting our Christology correct. Councils were called and Bishops debated. Some of our most famous creeds on Christology came from those councils – Nicea, Athanasian, and Chalcedon. Legend has it at times punches were thrown as between competing Bishops. History teaches that Bishops, Athanasius repeatedly, were repeatedly exiled because they refused to agree with a consensus they were convinced was wrong. It seems only fitting in light of that contest that we work to get our Christology right as based on Scripture.
As we start out we note that it is easier, when it comes to Christology, to say what is heresy than it is to say what is accurate.
Indeed, Dr. Harold O. J. Brown, in his book titled “Heresies” argued that orthodoxy only comes into existence after heresy has been introduced and so needs to be fought off. And Christology is one area that he uses to prove his thesis. The Church fathers could identify the heresies and in identifying the heresies they mapped out for us today orthodoxy in our doctrine of the Person of Christ.
So… what are the common heresies involved in the incarnation? There are three that we will limn out this week and next. Those heresies are simple to remember.
1.) The church was often guilty of denying the humanity of Christ. – That is error #1
2.) With the Enlightenment going fwd. The heresy dujour is denying the deity of Christ #2
3.) The third heresy is the denial that Christ has two natures – that Christ is 100% God and 100% man at the same time while being only one person.
So we will get through #1 this morning and some of #2 perhaps.
In terms of how these heresies rolled out, there was a pendulum effect to them all. There would be one heresy expressed only to find another heresy expressed that sat at the other extreme. Dr. B. B. Warfield, the greatest theologian for 50 years in America summarized this pendulum heretical whiplash
“To the onlooker from this distance of time, the mainline of progress of the debate takes on an odd appearance of a steady zig-zag advance. Arising out of the embers of the Arian controversy, there is first vigorously asserted, over against the reduction of our Lord to the dimensions of a creature, the pure Deity of His spiritual nature (Apollinarianism).
Arianism was the first great heresy of the Church. Named after a Church Bishop – Arius, Arianism C. AD 256-336) denied that Christ was very God of very God. Arius taught that Christ was the first and greatest creation of God but that he was not Himself very God of very God God.
This of course is a denial of the clear teaching of Scripture.
Titus 2:13-“Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (NKJV).
Philippians 2:5-8-“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
Paul’s statement that Christ was “in the form of God” are words that would have been understood at his time as saying with stark explicitness the deity of Jesus Christ. The phraseology in Greek that St. Paul uses was the linguistic coin of his day. The phraseology was first popularized by Aristotelian philosophy and as such, it was the most natural way of expressing the divinity of Jesus Christ.
The word “Form” as in “being in the form of God” is the equivalent to our saying “Christ Jesus having the specific character of God. In the Greek thought of that time “Form” was that body of qualities which distinguished Christ from all other spiritual beings. It is a way of directly saying that “the incarnate Christ was God.” If Jesus Christ was not in the form of God He would not be God, not having those characterizing qualities which make God God.
Note Humiliation in passage
Note Exaltation in passage
Talk about Kenosis
emptied
ἐκένωσεν (ekenōsen)
Verb – Aorist Indicative Active – 3rd Person Singular
Strong’s 2758: (a) I empty, (b) I deprive of content, make unreal. From kenos; to make empty, i.e. to abase, neutralize, falsify
Some versions translate “made himself of no reputation.” Other’s translate “emptied himself.” Some versions render this “he made himself nothing.”
Often this passage will be made to say too much as if this emptying means that Jesus Christ surrendered His divine nature. This, of course, would be a mistake. The emptying of Himself here points more to the abasement of Himself then the deletion of His divine qualities.
All illustrations fail when we come to these kinds of truths but I often think of Mark Twain’s “The Prince & The Pauper” with this passage. If you remember Tom Canty and Prince Edward looking like doubles switch themselves. Prince Edward takes on the Pauper’s Tom Canty’s life. He remains Prince Edward with all of his dignity as King but no one recognizes Him and no one pays him deference save one soldier returning from war but that only in order to humor the now King Edward. In the story the Prince, quite w/o realizing what he was doing emptied himself. Christ, quite realizing what He was doing emptied or abased Himself. He still retained His Kingship but very few recognized him. His glory does periodically break out but on the whole, in His person, his glory is banked and He is not recognized for who He is and all this so that He might honor the Father.
The important thing to note for our purposes this morning is that when Christ empties himself we should not read that as Christ loses his Divine nature. It is perhaps better to think rather than Christ losing His divine nature he instead adds a human nature to His one person.
Arius never had a divine nature to begin with. The bishop Arius asserted instead that was begotten by God the Father at a point in time thus denying the eternality of Jesus and thus affirming that Jesus Christ was God’s highest creation, making Christ ontologically subordinate to the only one God. Arius still affirmed that Jesus was God’s Son but denied that Jesus Christ was God’s eternal Son.
Arius asserted;
“If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this, it follows there was a time when the Son was not.”
The contest here was never certain. Indeed, for long stretches of time Arianism won the day and interestingly enough the matter was on everyone’s lips.
An early Church Father during this time Gregory of Nyssa could write,
“If you ask for change, someone philosophizes to you on the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you ask the price of bread, you are told, ‘The Father is greater and the Son is inferior.’ If you ask, ‘is the bath ready?’ someone answers, ‘The Son was created from nothing.’”
So it was an issue that was on everyone’s mind and the contest was hot and for years Arius won out in the Church. Athanasius, the champion of Christ’s full deity was exiled more than once as punishment for his crime of not accepting Arianism. Medieval legend insisted that the man that our Santa Claus is based on (St. Nicholas) came to blows with an Arian and though the legend likely is not true, it still reveals how much passion 1000 years later still surrounded the subject.
Let us pause here to draw out some application/ implication.
1.) I can’t help but be stunned at how well the rank and file knew their Christian faith if the issue of the deity of Jesus Christ was as much on everyone’s mind as Gregory of Nyssa records that it was. Wouldn’t be a wonderful thing if once again people everywhere were talking about the central tenets of Biblical Christianity? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the subject of Christ being consubstantial with the Father was as common as whether Aaron Rodgers lied about being vaccinated?
2.) We still have forms of this today within the Church.
“The God and man of Barth’s theology are unknown till, in a common process, they become identical w/ one another and therefore indistinguishable from one another. Thus revelation becomes ventriloquism. The God and man of Barth’s theology are unknown to one another and therefore indistinguishable from one another. Election thus becomes their (God and mans) common aim and task.”
Barth seeks to escape what he speaks of as the monism of traditional Reformed theology. But his own position ultimately destroys all difference between God and man by means of process. For him, all reality is one stream of becoming. This is monism with a vengeance.
CVT
The New Modernism — pg. 386
3.) When we think of all that Athanasius went through to champion the deity of Jesus Christ – his exiles, his denunciations, his heartbreak witnessing Arians being appointed to Bishoprics
We are reminded of James Russel Lowell’s lines,
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
Contending for Christ is often a lonely business that comes at great cost. Can we like Athanasius – the hero of Nicea – be satisfied enough to keep fighting just knowing that God standeth with the shadow, keeping watch above His own?
Athanasius despite all odds, despite being known as “Athanasius Contra Mundum” (Athanasius against the World) Athanasius never quit fighting. The man understood like only few men do that
My orders are to fight
Then if I win,
Or bravely fail
What Matters it?
God only doth prevail
The servant craveth naught,
Except to serve with might.
I was not told to win or lose, –
My orders are to fight.
The modern Church today … The Reformed Church today is just as ill if not more ill than the Church at the time of Athanasius’ time… or even in Calvin’s time. The issue perhaps has changed though in many quarters the deity of Christ remains up for grabs. Like times past it remains the case that the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.
Are we willing to call a spade a ruddy shovel when it comes to protecting the deity of Jesus Christ? Do we tell Jehovah’s Witnesses that “Unless they repent, they are going to hell?” Do we tell Modernists who deny the possibility of the supernatural, and so deny deity at the same time that they are without God and without hope? Athanasius loved His savior to suffer exile five times. Does our passion for Christ and His honor rise that high? It should.
4.) The fourth implication of this is the connection of Christology to soteriology. The doctrine of Christ to the doctrine of salvation. Arians deny that Christ is consubstantial with the Father. The moment they made that pivot not only did they explode the doctrine of the trinity but they also exploded the doctrine of Salvation. If Christ is not very god of very god, per Arius, then we remain dead in our sins. Scripture and our catechism following Scripture teach that if we are to be saved then the one who dies as our substitute must be very God of very God.
Question 17: Why must He in one person be also very God?
Answer: That He might by the power of His Godhead sustain in His human nature the burden of God’s wrath;3 and might obtain for, and restore to us, righteousness and life.4
If Jesus Christ was not very God of very God then He could not sustain God’s wrath against humans and so we even now remain dead in our sins and trespasses.
5.) If Jesus Christ was not very God of very God … begotten and not made, consubstantial with the Father, sharing in the eternality of the Godhead then he is no more to be esteemed than other false Messiahs. Indeed, He is to be despised and scorned.
But of course, our Father Athanasius was correct here and we owe him a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.
Finally, after years and years literally in the wilderness in 325 Athanasius came back and was at the Council of Nicea where this matter was finally established. There they confessed,
“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.”
And 1800 years later we still confess the Nicene Creed as being a proper reflection of Scripture. We still affirm the necessity of the deity of Jesus Christ. We still affirm the veracity of Scripture when it teaches repeatedly that Christ was and remains in the very form of God.
Not only our Christology depends upon it but so does our doctrine of Theology proper and our doctrine of soteriology.
