Part 1
Did Christ have a sin nature?
According to our blogger fallen nature means sin nature. Is everyone in agreement with that? What does fallen nature mean? What does sin nature mean? Do we all agree with the syllogism that since Christ was 100% human and since all humans have a sin nature ergo He must have by necessity a sin nature? Or with the syllogism behind the syllogism: Christ has a human nature; human nature is fallen; therefore He has a fallen nature? Can one have a sin nature and be sinless? How can the sinless One reap the “wages of sin”? Does assuming a postlapsarian nature and remaining sinless are mutually exclusive?
Does fallen nature mean sinful nature?
Postlapsarianists want Christ to be exactly like us, fallen, yet not exactly like us, sinful. How can the two be reconciled? Despite attributing to Him a “sin nature” they claim that He resisted temptations and never sinned. But even if Christ remained totally sinless, as most postlapsarianists aver, the fact remains that as fallen He must bear all the consequences of the fall, which, besides having an irresistible tendency to sin, includes corruption, suffering, and physical and spiritual death. Did Christ inherit a fallen human nature and did He necessarily live under the conditions of fallen world, as any other human being?
Is Christ’s human nature fallen or un-fallen?
Fallen – un-fallen. This has been the binary along which Christologists have been debating Christ’s humanness. But can it be that there is an alternative? Christ does not seem to be un-fallen. He exhibits the consequences of the fall, as we all do: He tires, He hungers, He thirsts, He displays ignorance, emotions, sadness, fears; He experiences pain, both physical and emotional, and as He comes into existence so He expires and dies. Yet, He also exhibits characteristics that are beyond normal human experience: He goes on for many days without any food or drink, He floats on water, and He shows extraordinary powers. He doesn’t seem to fit either condition. What’s the answer?
Was Christ in control of the passions or under their control?
Christ has clearly exhibited characteristics that belong to fallen humanity. Could we then call Him fallen? Well, there are a few more questions that need to be answered first: Was He inherently fallen, that is, were sinfulness, corruption and mortality ingrained in His human nature or was He free of these consequences of the fall, but He voluntarily assumed only certain of these consequences, called blameless or innocent passions? Are such passions essential elements of humanity so that Christ had to necessarily assume them in order to be fully human or did He exercise control over the human passions He accepted freely for our salvation?
How did Christ’s two natures coexist?
There is another set of questions pertaining to the union of humanity and divinity in His person. Was there any interchange between His two natures? Did the union have any effect over His humanity or did the two natures function separately and independently of each other? How do we perceive that union? Should we treat Christ as a mere human being in the way He thinks, He acts, He lives, and He dies, or should we take into account the fact that the hypostatic union exerts an influence on Christ’s humanity, making Him a unique reality? What are the consequences of the hypostatic union? How does Christ function as God and man?
Could Christ have a fallen human nature?
Could He? Christ is the incarnate Son of God. Anything predicated upon the human nature of Christ is predicated upon the Person of Christ. Isn’t saying Christ’s human nature is fallen the same as saying the Son of God is fallen? Could we possibly attribute fallenness to the Son of God? How could He be subject to all the consequences of the original sin? How could Christ win a victory over death when He was doomed to die from the moment He was conceived? How could the Son of God be an un-voluntary instrument of Satan? How could the powers of His intellect and soul be feeble and His spirit deprived of God’s sanctifying grace?
In this blog post we’ve only posed questions. In the posts that will follow we’ll examine our blogger’s unequivocal conviction that Christ was fallen, just like we all are, and attempt to provide what we think are definitive answers, at least from an Eastern Orthodox perspective.
Part 2
1) An official pronouncement of the Church
Fourth Ecumenical Council, Tome of Leo
Jesus Christ was born in the entire and perfect nature of man very God, whole in what was His, whole in what was ours. By “ours” we mean those things that the Creator formed in us at the beginning and which He once more received restored. For those things that the deceiver introduced, and the deceived man admitted, not a trace was in the Savior.
2) The witness of the Holy Scripture
Heb. 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings.
1 Cor. 2:8
None of the rulers of this age understood this [i.e. “redemption in Christ” (RSV)]; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
3) The witness of the Fathers of the Church
St. Cyril of Alexandria
Christ has refashioned the nature of man into what it was in the beginning. “In Him all things are made new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
St. Maximos the Confessor
In being formed as a human being, He condescended to what was by law the creaturely origin of Adam prior to his fall.
St. John Damascene
You assumed, O Master, the entire Adam, before His transgression, free from sin.
4) The witness of the hymnology of the Church
Kontakion, First Sunday of Lent
The uncircumscribed Word of the Father became circumscribed taking flesh from thee, O Theotokos, and He has restored the sullied image to its ancient glory, filling it with the divine beauty.
Vespers of Annunciation
I will give birth to the Bodiless One who will take flesh from me, so that by His union with it, He may raise man, as the only mighty One, to the ancient dignity.
5) The confirmation by Orthodox Theologians
Panagiotis Trembelas
Since the Lord was sent by His Father to the world to raise the fallen human nature, reconstituting it as another ancestor and new Adam, it was natural for Him to assume the human nature, which “Adam received sinless at the first creation,” so that that nature which the first Adam threw to “corruption and death,” the Lord raised “sinless according to nature.” Therefore the Lord did not assume another human nature, different from the one that came out of the hands of the Creator, but the self same one carried by us, save healthy, and not one corrupted or rendered sick by sin, which reveals Him perfect man, precisely as the first Adam was in Paradise before falling into transgression.
Metropolitan Hierotheos
Christ’s conception in the womb of the Theotokos took place creatively through the Holy Spirit and not by seed, because Christ had to assume the pure nature that Adam had before his transgression.
In the Orthodox Church we don’t bring fancy arguments or express personal opinions. We rely on the Church, “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).
Part 3
I must have left you quite confused and puzzled with our previous post. In our very first post we proposed that there is an alternative to fallen or un-fallen. But then we brought evidence that Christ had a nature like Adam before the fall. We will clarify that in becoming human the Son of God voluntarily accepts only certain consequences of the fall, called the blameless or innocent passions, while rejecting the sinful passions.
1) Official pronouncements of the Church
St. Sophronios of Jerusalem, Synodical Epistle
“God the Logos operates through humanity. However, Christ experiences everything human ‘naturally’ and ‘in a human way’ although not by necessity or involuntarily.”
Second Confession of Orthodox Bishops at their Consecration
“The Word of God…took our whole fallen human nature from the pure and virginal blood of the only immaculate and pure Virgin…Furthermore I confess that He assumed all our human blameless passions that constitute our nature, excepting sin, i.e. hunger, thirst, weariness, tears, and such like: He underwent them not of necessity as in our case, but by His human will following His divine will; for willingly He hungered, willingly He thirsted, willingly He wearied, willingly He died.”
Note: It does not say that His human nature is fallen, but that He assumed our fallen nature (what happened when He did that will be addressed in a future post). Later on it explicates that by this expression it means that He assumed only the blameless passions of our human nature (and it lists them, excluding any sinful consequences). It also makes clear that He assumed the blameless passions “not of necessity as in our case.” These are the two points postlapsarianists need to understand and accept. Otherwise they are outside the pale of Orthodoxy.
2) The witness of the Holy Scripture
John 19:30
“He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.”
John 10:18
“No one takes [My life] from Me, but I lay it down on My own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.”
3) The witness of the Fathers of the Church
St. Gregory the Theologian
“Are you then to be allowed to dwell upon all that humiliates Him, while passing over all that exalts Him, and to count on your side the fact that He suffered, but to leave out of the account the fact that it was of His own will?”
St. John Damascene
“Of a truth our natural passions were in harmony with nature and above nature in Christ. For they were stirred in Him after a natural manner when He permitted the flesh [by an act of His human will] to suffer what was proper to it: but they were above nature because that which was natural did not in the Lord assume command over the will. For no compulsion is contemplated in Him but all is voluntary. For willingly He hungered, willingly He thirsted, willingly He feared and willingly He died.”
4)The witness of the hymnology of the Church
Vesperal hymn
“Let us sing hymns of praise to Him who of His own free will was crucified in the flesh, suffered, was buried and rose from the dead for us.”
Holy Saturday Matins
“Rise up of Your own will, You who willingly gave Yourself up for us.”
5) The confirmation by Orthodox Theologians
Fr. Georges Florovsky
“Like the First Adam before the fall, He is able not to die at all (potens non mori), though obviously He can still die (potens autem mori). He was exempt from the necessity of death, because His humanity was pure and innocent. Therefore Christ’s death was and could not but be voluntary, not by the necessity of fallen nature, but by free choice and acceptance.”
Part 4
1) Official pronouncement of the Church
Sixth Ecumenical Synod, Synodical Letter by St. Sophronios of Jerusalem
He gave to the human nature, whenever He wanted, time to act and to suffer what was proper… For He did not accept these [human idioms] involuntarily or by constraint… His human characteristics were above human nature. Not because [His] nature was not human, but because He became a human being voluntarily, and having become a human being He accepted [them] voluntarily; and they are not [acting] tyrannically or by constraint and unwillingly, as it is with us, but He gave His consent whenever and to the extent that He wanted He allowed them to inflict pain on Him and to cause Him sufferings which were against nature.
2) The witness of the Holy Scripture
John 10:18
No one takes [My life] from Me, but I lay it down on My own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.
3) The witness of the Fathers of the Church
St. Hilary
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; it was transformed into heavenly glory on the Mount, it put fevers to flight by its touch, it gave new eyesight by its spittle.
St. Ambrose
He did not hunger because He was overcome by the weakness of the body, but by His hunger He proved that He had verily taken upon Himself a body; that so He might teach us that He had taken not only our body, but also the weaknesses of that body.
St. Maximos
When it comes to the Lord the natural characteristics do not precede His will, as it happens with us. For even though He truly hungered and thirsted, He did not hunger and thirst after our manner, but in a manner that exceeds ours, because He accepted such things voluntarily.
4) The witness of the hymnology of the Church
Vespers of the Holy Spirit
Master, who by extreme condescension have become a partaker with us of like flesh and blood and of our blameless passions, which You have willingly accepted to experience in Your bowels of compassion; and in that You Yourself have accepted to be tempted, You of Your own free will became a Helper for us that are tempted; wherefore, You led us into Your own passionlessness.
5) The confirmation by Orthodox theologians
Vladimir Lossky
Only Christ has known what death really is, since His deified humanity must not die. Only He could take the full measure of agony, since death seized His being from the outside instead of welling up like fate from within, instead of being, as with fallen man, the irreducible kernel of a being mixed with non-being when sickness and time have corrupted his pulp of flesh… The finality of death was, in effect, not rooted in the human nature of Christ.
Fr. John Romanides
That He was not allowing oeconomically His incorruptibility to be operative does not mean that He was under the dominion of death. He received the human nature from the Virgin through the Holy Spirit as it was before the fall, neither incorruptible nor under the dominion of death.
Metropolitan Hierotheos
The innocent passions functioned in Christ above nature, because it was not possible for them to take precedence over His will. There was nothing compulsory in Christ. Therefore it was by willing that He hungered, by willing that He thirsted, by willing that He was afraid, and by willing that He died. In other words, the passions did not govern Christ, but Christ governed them.
Part 5
1. An official pronouncement of the Church
Fourth Ecumenical Council, Tome of Leo
“The fact that He partook of our human infirmity did not make Him a partaker of our transgressions. He took on Him “the form of a servant” without the defilement of any sin, augmenting what was human, without diminishing what was divine.”
2. The witness of the Holy Scripture
Acts 2:27 (Ps. 16:10)
“For You will not abandon My soul to Hades, nor let Your Holy One see corruption.”
John 1:14
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”
3. The witness of the Fathers of the Church
St. Athanasios the Great
“Christ’s body by virtue of the union of the Word with it, it was no longer subject to corruption according to its own nature, but by reason of the Word that was come to dwell in it, it was placed out of the reach of corruption.”
St. Gregory the Theologian
“Because the devil led astray to the transgression of God’s commandment the nature which God created sinless and caused to it sin, which brings death, this self-same nature did God the Logos assume once more (pavlin) unto Himself, and rendered it incapable of the diabolical deviation and of invention of sin. That is why the Lord said, “The ruler of this world is coming, and he finds nothing his in Me.”
St. Gregory of Nyssa
“He Who has taken all that was ours, on the terms of giving to us in return what is His, even as He took disease, death, curse, and sin, so took our slavery also, not in such a way as Himself to have what He took, but so as to purge our nature of such evils, our defects being swallowed up and done away within His stainless nature.”
St. Gregory Palamas
“Christ took upon Himself our guilty nature from the most pure Virgin and united it, new and unmixed with the old seed, to His divine person. He rendered it guiltless and righteous, so that all His spiritual descendants would remain outside the ancestral curse and condemnation.”
4. The witness of the hymnology of the Church
Feast of the Annunciation
Today…is the festival of the Virgin… Adam is renewed… the tabernacle of our nature, which the Lord took upon Himself, deifying the substance He assumed, has become the Temple of God … Christ God, our salvation, has assumed our nature, restoring it to Himself.
Feast of Holy Transfiguration
With Your invisible hands, O Christ, You formed man in Your image; You now manifest the original beauty in that same body; You reveal it not as an image, but as You are in Yourself, truly both God and man by nature.
Feast of the Ascension
The pre-eternal and un-originate God, having mystically deified the human nature He assumed, has now ascended.
5. The confirmation by Orthodox Theologians
Nikos Matsoukas
Christ’s human nature remains always created, before and even after the Resurrection. On account, however, of the hypostatic union, it becomes a partaker of theosis and incorruption, not being subject to any corruption (neither decay nor dissolution). Before the Resurrection however it is subject voluntarily to the real blameless and natural passions through concession, so that the plan of divine economy may be realized.
Part 6
Concerning the statement, “No special exceptions are needed for Him,” it would be sufficient to recall Christ’s extraordinary conception and birth. Since the beginning the Church has expressed her faith that Christ was conceived without human seed (virgin birth) and that He was born leaving His mother a virgin, as she was before conception. Being born without a human father is an exception, not an excuse. And it is of faith.
Indeed an extraordinary Being requires an extraordinary conception and birth! A Protestant may believe whatever s/he wants, but to be Orthodox a Christian must believe in the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ and the ever-virginity of the most holy Theotokos (Mother of God).
1) Official pronouncements of the Church
First Ecumenical Synod
“…the Son of God… was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man.”
Fifth Ecumenical Synod
“The Word of God… came down from heaven and was incarnate of the holy, glorious, Theotokos, and Ever-Virgin Mary.”
2) The witness of the Holy Scripture
Mt. 1:23, Is. 7:14
“Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.”
3) The witness of the Fathers of the Church
St. Augustine
“A Virgin conceived, a Virgin bore, and after the birth as a Virgin still.”
St. Cyril of Alexandria
“After His birth, He preserved the virginity of His mother, although this is not true of any of the saints…Because He was God by nature, when in this last time He also took the human condition, He revealed the birth from the Virgin as different from all other births. Therefore, it is right and just that the blessed one should be called Theotokos and Virgin Mother. For Jesus, who was born of her, was not a mere man.”
St. John Damascene
“[He is] like to us in that He was man born of woman, and above us because it was not by seed, but by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Virgin Mary, transcending the laws of parturition.”
4) The witness of the hymnology of the Church
Ancient liturgical hymn
“Only begotten Son and Word of God, although immortal, You humbled Yourself for our salvation, taking flesh from the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary and, without change, becoming man.”
5) The confirmation by Orthodox theologians
Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae
“Through the descent of Christ as hypostasis within her and as He began to form the body from her with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit as a whole person, her body that was kept by her in the purity of virginity and in the purity of total availability for God, is cleansed also of the original sin so that the divine Hypostasis may not take His body from a body still under this sin and under the natural law of birth in voluptuous pleasure.”
Part 7
Was Christ’s humanity the same as ours?
Yes, Christ was/is 100% human, but more than that. Much more. So there were more “exceptions” in Christ. Besides His miracles, His suffering and death, and especially His bodily resurrection from the dead, they all testify that He was more than merely human. Contrary to the blogger’s assertion that Christ was a “human just like we are,” the Church’s belief is that even considered in His humanity He was above our human nature.
1) An official pronouncement of the Church
Sixth Ecumenical Synod, Synodical Epistle by St. Sophronios of Jerusalem:
“His human characteristics were above human nature… and were not [acting upon Him] tyrannically or by constraint and unwillingly, as it is with us.”
2) The witness of the Holy Scripture
- Mk. 2:10: The Son of Man has authority to forgive sins.
- Lk. 9:47: Jesus perceived the thoughts of their hearts…
- John 3:31: He who comes from above is above all…he who comes from heaven is above all.
- John 6:40: I will raise him up at the last day.
- Acts 2:27 (Ps. 16:10): For You will not abandon My soul to Hades, nor let Your Holy One see corruption.
3) The witness of the Fathers of the Church
St. Athanasios
God is not changed into human flesh or substance, but in Himself He glorified the nature that He assumed, so that human nature with its weak and mortal flesh was exalted into divine glory, whereby it possessed all power in heaven and on earth, which it did not possess before it was assumed by the Logos.
St. Gregory of Nyssa
He was born, and yet transcended our common humanity both in the manner of His birth, and by His incapacity of a change to corruption … [B]oth His birth and death were independent of the conditions of human weakness,—in fact, were above nature.
St. Dionysios the Areopagite
He is not called man as Author of men, but as being truly man in His essence. However, we do not define the Lord Jesus humanly, for He is not man only (neither beyond human essence nor of mere human essence)… [He] took substance above substance, and works things of man above man.
St. Maximos the Confessor
His flesh, united to Him hypostatically, was not human in the human way, for He was not a mere human being; but having seized the human [passions] naturally—for He had a human nature—He was carried to act not according to a natural need or constrain which is natural with us, but according to a divine authority.
4) The witness of the hymnology of the Church
Christmas Great Hours
God has appeared to men from a Virgin, assuming our form and deifying what He assumed.
5) The confirmation by Orthodox theologians
Fr. Georges Florovsky
The humanity of the Logos is different from ours: it is without sin. This has a decisive soteriological significance: Christ was exempt from the inevitability of death, and consequently His death was a voluntary death, or free sacrifice.
Fr. John Romanides
The Lord alone was exempted from this captivity [to be in a state of corruption and death], being born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin.
These differences are not “excuses.” They constitute our faith concerning Jesus Christ, and one is not allowed to distort the truth and falsify our Orthodox faith passed on to us. Christ was sinless. We are not. So what similarity is there between us? Sinless means not that He didn’t commit any sin, but that He could not commit any sin. He had a sinless nature. Not because natures have or have not sins, but because the agent of that nature, the hypostasis (person, if you wish) of Christ’s humanity is the sinless Son of God. But if Christ’s human nature was sinless, and if death is a consequence of sin, that means He should not suffer or die (and notice, we don’t say He couldn’t, but He shouldn’t). But He did. So, what’s your answer? Our answer will be the subject of our next and final post.
Part 8
Did Christ assume a pre-fallen or a post-fallen humanity?
Our blogger states that to claim that Jesus assumed a pre-fallen humanity means that He did not actually become like us in every way (Heb 2:17). According to his analysis this would mean that God did not actually create humans, “like us in every way,” but some super-duper creatures that became human only after they sinned. Likewise it would also mean that after the general resurrection people will cease to be humans, because in that blessed state “they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Lk. 20:36).
Postapsarianists ask: How can we have a High Priest who is able to share in our weaknesses if He didn’t actually assume (take on) our weaknesses? We retort, how could He save us if He were in the same predicament as we all are? But how then could Jesus redeem our fallen humanity by assuming a pre-fallen humanity? Because He did not come to redeem the sins of our humanity; He came to redeem our nous, our mind, and our heart that give rise to sin. But according to the Fathers, “What is not assumed is not redeemed.” This is the most abused patristic dictum. Let’s see it in its context.
St. Gregory the Theologian used this much misunderstood phrase to prove that the teaching of Apollinaris, namely that Christ assumed only human flesh without the nous, was heretical, because the divine Logos assumed not merely human flesh, but human flesh together with the human nous, the entire anthropos. In his words,
That which He has not assumed He has not healed, but that which He has truly united with God is saved. If only a part of Adam fell, then that part that is assumed is saved, but if all of Adam fell, then he is completely saved only by complete union with Him who has been born man in completeness.
It is obvious that the divine Logos did not come to unite our sinful mind with God, but to cleanse and purify the mind, in which every thought is generated. St. Gregory of Nyssa expresses a similar thought to that of the Theologian:
The Lord … was made in the likeness of man, and shared our nature, becoming like us in all things, yet without sin. He was like us in all things, in that He took upon Him manhood in its entirety with soul and body, so that our salvation was accomplished by means of both.
What the divine Logos assumed is not sin or sinful flesh. Sin did not fall; Adam did. Christ did not come to save sin, but to save us from sin; He did not come to heal our evil tendencies, but to heal our nous that gives rise to them. Far from advocating that the divine Logos assumed our fallen nature, St. Gregory the Theologian states clearly and unequivocally that the humanity assumed by Him was one rendered incapable of falling into sin and with a human will that could not be opposed to God, because it was rendered homotheos, “wholly one with God.” Postlapsarianists are not allowed to distort the phrase of this great Father for their own agenda, which runs contrary to the inspired teaching of this Father, a teaching the Church has made Her own.
Source: https://www.orthodoxwitness.org/did-christ-have-a-fallen-human-nature-part-1-of-8/