Appendix 8

[Start of the Internet article, as it was on March 26, 2013]

According to Orthodox Christian belief, Jesus was per­fect man and per­fect God at the same time. This belief is nec­essary for salvation accord­ing to the Athanasian creed held dear by most Christians. Modern Christian scholars reject this idea not because it is difficult to understand but because it cannot be meaningfully expressed. The doctrine cannot be stated in any way that is free from contradic­tions. It is impossible for Jesus to have been perfect man and per­fect God at the same time, for this would mean that he was finite and infinite at the same time, and that he was fallible and infallible at the same time. This cannot be.

What the creed denies is also quite significant. The creed was form­ulated in response to the claims of various early Christian groups, and so includes clauses that deny the be­liefs of those groups. In response to the Arians who believed that Jesus was not God, the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) decreed that he was fully God. In response to the Apollina­rians who believed Jesus was God but not fully human, the council of Constantinople (A.D. 381) de­creed that Jesus was fully human.

Then there was Nestorianism, the belief that started when Nestorius den­ied that Mary could be called “Mother of God.” To him, Mary was mother of the human Jesus only. This implied that there were two Christs: one divine, the other human. Against Nestorius, the council of Ephesus (A.D. 431) de­creed that the two natures of Jesus cannot be separated. Every­thing Jesus does is done by both the humanity and divinity in him. Likewise, every­thing that happened to him happened to both the man and God that he is. There­fore Mary gave birth to both, both died on the cross, etc.

At yet another council, the council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451), the creed received some finishing touches and the Athanasian creed was declared offi­cial church teaching. Most Christians are not familiar with the detailed im­plications of the creed, and in their own minds conceive of Jesus in the very ways the creed was formulated to deny. This tendency results from the fact that the creed’s definition of Jesus is im­possible for any human mind to com­prehend. One can only repeat the words, but cannot grasp the meaning of the re­quired belief. Therefore most just repeat the creed with their lips but in their minds turn to views of Jesus that are less taxing on the intellect, even though those views were declared by the Church to be heretical.

The orthodox doctrine is logically impossible. As Huston Smith, scholar of comparative religion, points out, it would not have been logically imposs­ible if the creed had only said that Jesus was somewhat divine and somewhat human. But this is expressly what the creed de­nies. For orthodox Christ­ians, Jesus cannot possess only some human qualities; he must possess all. He must be fully human. At the same time, he cannot possess only some divine qualities; he must have all. He must be fully divine. This is impossible because to be fully divine means one has to be free of human limitations. If he has only one human limitation then he is not God. But according to the creed he has every human limitation. How, then, can he be God? Huston Smith calls this a blatant contradiction. In his book The World’s Religions, he writes:

If it was said that Jesus was partly human and partly divine that would not be logically impossible but only scripturally imposs­ible. The Bible nowhere teaches that Jesus was divine in any way. Furthermore, if he was only partly divine then he was not the One True God of the Old and New Testaments. God is All-Powerful, not somewhat all-powerful; God is All-Knowing, not somewhat all-knowing.

C. Randolph Ross is a Christian. In his book Common Sense Christianity he debunks the orthodox view “not because it is diffi­cult to understand,” he says, but because “it cannot meaningfully be said.” He rejects it because “it is impossible,” he says. (Common Sense Christian­ity, p.79). His arguments are so persua­sive that I can do little better than just repeat them. To be human means to be limited, lacking in know­ledge, prone to mistakes, imperfect. To be God means just the opposite: unlimited, com­plete in knowledge, infall­ible, perfect. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say of one person that he was both. Either he was one or the other.

To those who say this is a paradox, Ross answers nicely. It is import­ant to understand first of all what is a paradox. A par­a­dox is some­thing that seems impossible but can be demon­strated to be true. On the other hand, the creed­al state­ment may seem true to some people but logic demonstrates it to be false. Ross argues with an example that makes the point suc­cinct:

Let me elaborate this last point. Human observation and analysis can turn out to be incorrect. This was the case with the scientist who figured that according to the laws of Physics bumblebees could not fly. The flaw in his procedure is that our understanding of the laws of nature is always improv­ing. New knowledge often declare old to be false. But with the rules of logic things are different. What is true by definition will always remain true unless we start redefining things. For example, 2+2=4. This equation will always re­main true. The only way this can ever become false is if we decide to change the definitions of the component parts. Now, by definition, a thing cannot be the oppo­site of itself. A thing cannot be perfect and imperfect at the same time. The presence of one of these qualities implies the absence of the other. Jesus was either one or the other. He cannot logically be both. Ross is very eloquent on this:

To develop this point further, I tried to relate it to what can and cannot be said about Jesus according to the creed. In the diagram below, we see a figure that is somewhat round and some­what square. It is unorthodox to say that Jesus was somewhat man and somewhat God. Even the models that combine a circle and a square one inside the other do not work, for in each case you have two objects clearly separable. Orthodoxy does not allow this for the two natures of Jesus. To satisfy the requirements of orthodoxy we must find an object which is at once a circle and a square. By definition, such an object cannot exist (see accom­panying diagram).

The difficulty is not with believing what the creed says. The problem is that the creed in effect says nothing. When we are told two opposites what then are we to believe? Ross puts it nicely:

The orthodox say that Jesus was imperfect with regards to his human nature but perfect with regards to his divine nature. The pro­blem with this position is that it implies the existence of two persons occupying the one body of Jesus: one perfect, the other imperfect. You need for this two minds, two wills, two characters. But the creed does not allow this necessary conclu­sion and insists that Jesus was not two persons but one only. Now, this one per­son had to be either perfect or not, infallible or not, unlimited in know­ledge or not. You cannot say of the same person that he was both.

When Jesus faced death on the cross according to Christ­ian belief, either he faced it with the human belief that he would be raised on the third day, or he faced death with the infallible knowledge that he would be so raised. If he believed with human faith in God’s power to raise him then he himself was not God. If, on the other hand, he faced death with infallible divine know­ledge that he would be resur­rected, then he was not taking any real risk in letting himself die. If the divine nature in him knew he would be raised, but he did not know this, then it was not his divine nature. If the divine nature knew something he did not, we are back to two persons.

This could get more difficult to explain as we look at the deeds reported of Jesus in the gospels and ask whether the divine or human nature or both per­formed those deeds. Let us consider the episode where Jesus curses the fig tree. First, the account as it appears in Mark:

As a result, the tree withered from the roots (v.20). Now, a few things are clear from this episode.

1. Jesus did not know the tree had no fruit until he went up to the tree and found nothing but leaves.
2. When Jesus saw leaves from a distance he hoped to find fruit on the tree.
3. It was not fig season, and this is why the tree had no figs. This com­ment from Mark clearly implies that it was a per­fectly good tree. If the tree was barren, Mark’s comment about the season would have been pointless and misleading.
4. Jesus did not know it was not fig season. If he had known this, he would not have expected the tree to have fruit, and he would not have cursed the tree for having no fruit.
5. The whole thing began when Jesus felt hungry.

Now it is easy to understand that the human Jesus felt hunger, and that the human Jesus did not know it was not fig season and so mistakenly expected the tree to have fruit. A divine Jesus would have known all these, and would not have to go to the tree to discover it had no fruit; he would not have been hungry in the first place.

Now the cursing of the tree is a little more difficult for those who assert the divinity of Jesus. His miracles, they say, are per­formed by his divine nature. Okay, so the divine Jesus cursed the tree. But why? Why ruin a tree which in Mark’s view was a perfectly good tree? Come fig season this tree would have had fruit and others could have eaten from it. The reason was that the human Jesus made a mistake. But why did the divine Jesus act upon the mistake of the human Jesus? Does the human mind in Jesus guide the divine nature in him? Actually, there is no war­rant for all this speculation, for scripture no­where says that Jesus has two natures. Those who want to be­lieve contrary to scripture that Jesus was fully human yet fully divine can go on speculating.

Some will say that everything is possible with God, and that we are using words here with their human meanings. This is true. Everything is possible with God. We believe that. If you tell me God did such and such and He is such and such I cannot say it is impossible. But what if you say “God did and did not,” or “He is and is not?” Your statements are meaningless. When you say that Jesus is perfect God and perfect man at the same time you are saying two opposite things. Therefore, I reply, “Impossible!”

So what we need here is to hear it said with meaning. If you think that the words have a different or deeper meaning, when applied to God I cannot help agreeing with you. But I would like to know with what meaning you are using those words. Ross explains:

As a result of this confusion, many Christians revert to the idea that Jesus had two natures that are separable. Sometimes he acts as a human and some­times he acts as God. This, of course, is not supported by scripture, and it would have been wiser to move to the scriptural position that Jesus was a man and a servant of God (See Matthew 12:18, Acts 3:13, Acts 4:27 in the Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version). ]

[End of excerpt from the Internet article]