Jesus Christ: True God and True Man

Christianity stands or falls with the identity of Jesus. Christians pray to him, worship him and call him Lord, while also insisting that he was born, grew up, wept, suffered and died. Both claims are held with equal seriousness, and the Church has spent much of its history explaining how they belong together.

The question still divides people. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, Muslims and many historians speak of Jesus with respect but understand him differently from the Nicene Creed. Within the historic churches, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians have been out of communion since the fifth century over how to describe the one Christ, even though dialogue in recent decades has found wide agreement about Christ.

This article looks at the New Testament witness, the seven Ecumenical Councils that guarded it, why the Orthodox Church holds that our salvation depends on who Jesus is, and the hardest objections, saying plainly where the evidence is strong and where it is debated.

In brief

The earliest Christian writings, the letters of Paul from the 50s, already place Jesus within the confession and work of the one God of Israel, while the Gospels present him as fully human in body, mind, will and suffering. The Church did not invent either side of that picture in the fourth century; it inherited both and had to say how they fit. The councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) confessed the Son as “true God from true God,” eternally begotten of the Father, and Constantinople insisted on his complete human mind and soul. Ephesus (431) confessed that Mary’s child is one Son, God the Word made flesh, and upheld the title Theotokos, “Mother of God,” against Nestorius; Chalcedon (451) confessed that one and the same Son in two natures, divine and human, united without confusion and without division. The councils of 553, 680 to 681 and 787 drew out what followed: the one crucified is “one of the Holy Trinity,” he has a real human will, and because he truly became visible he may be depicted in icons.

For the Orthodox Church this is not abstract theory. Salvation is healing and union with God (theosis). Only God can share God’s life, and only what Christ took on can be healed. Some points remain honestly disputed: how early and how “high” the first Christology was, what Nestorius and Eutyches really meant, and whether the remaining divisions with the Oriental Orthodox concern faith or words.

Thesis: The apostolic witness and the councils that guarded it confess one Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father who became fully human without ceasing to be God, and this identity is the ground of the Christian hope of salvation as healing and union with God.

The question at Caesarea Philippi

Near Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples what people were saying about him. The answers were honorable: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Then he asked, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:15–16, NKJV; all Bible quotations are from the NKJV unless noted).

The Church spent centuries unfolding how much that answer contained. Jesus is the Messiah, yet greater than a human king. He is Son, yet not a second god beside the Father. He is born, hungry, tired, sorrowful, wounded and dead, yet the New Testament places him within the identity and work of the Creator. The Church confessed one Jesus who is true God and true man.

What the earliest sources say

The preexistent Son

The story of Jesus does not begin in Mary’s womb. Paul writes that Christ, “being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6–7). John begins before creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), and then, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Jesus asks the Father to glorify him “with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5).

Preexistence alone would not prove deity, but the New Testament goes further. “All things were created through Him and for Him,” and “in Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16–17). He upholds “all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3). Thomas addresses the risen Jesus as “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

Worship and the one Lord

The most striking evidence is how early it is. In 1 Corinthians, written in the mid-50s, Paul takes the confession of Israel’s one God and places Jesus inside it: “for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:6). In Philippians 2:10, every knee bows “at the name of Jesus,” words drawn from Isaiah 45:23, where the one God says, “to Me every knee shall bow.” Passages about the Lord of Israel are applied to Jesus (Romans 10:9–13; Hebrews 1:10–12), and believers are those who “call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:2).

Scholars describe this differently. Larry Hurtado argued that devotion to Jesus alongside God appeared very early among Jewish believers. Richard Bauckham argued that the New Testament includes Jesus within the “divine identity” of the God of Israel.¹ James Dunn, who dedicated his study to both of them, gave a more qualified answer: early Christian language about Jesus was remarkable, yet in his view the first Christians did not, by and large, worship Jesus in the same way as God.² Whatever the right categories, {{strong: Paul’s undisputed letters, written within about twenty to thirty years of the crucifixion, already speak of Jesus in language Jewish monotheism reserved for God}}. The idea that Jesus was regarded only as a human teacher until the fourth century does not fit this evidence. See also Did Paul invent the divinity of Jesus? and Did Jesus actually claim to be God?

Early in the second century, Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Ephesians on his way to martyrdom, already held both sides together: “There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first passible and then impassible, even Jesus Christ our Lord.”³

The complete humanity of Jesus

The Word “became flesh.” In biblical usage this means genuine human existence, not a costume. Jesus is born and grows: he “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). He is hungry (Matthew 4:2), thirsty (John 19:28), tired (John 4:6), troubled (John 12:27) and grieved (Mark 14:34), and he dies. After rising, he says, “Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:39), and he eats before his disciples.

His humanity includes a human mind, affections and will. Hebrews says he learned obedience through what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8), and in Gethsemane he prays, “nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). He was “in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Sinlessness does not make him less human, since sin is a sickness of human nature, not part of what makes us human.

St Gregory of Nazianzus put the paradox in a famous passage of his Third Theological Oration: “What He was He continued to be; what He was not He took to Himself.” He then pairs the human and the divine in one subject: “He hungered—but He fed thousands,” and “He dies, but He gives life, and by His death destroys death.”⁴

The virginal conception

Matthew and Luke, in narratives that differ in perspective and detail, both describe a conception by the Holy Spirit while Mary is a virgin (Matthew 1:18–25; Luke 1:26–38). Historians discuss their sources and chronology, and the doctrine is confessed on the testimony of these Gospels rather than proved by historical method.

Matthew cites Isaiah 7:14 in the form the Church received in the Septuagint. The Greek text reads, “behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel” (Brenton’s translation of the LXX), and Matthew writes, “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel” (Matthew 1:23). The Hebrew word ‘almah is often translated “young woman” (so the RSV), while the Greek parthenos normally means “virgin.” The Orthodox Church reads the Old Testament in its Septuagint form, and the site’s article on Isaiah 7:14 and the Septuagint treats the question fully.

Christ is not divine because he had no human father. He is the eternal Son before his conception. From Mary the Son takes real humanity; by the Spirit his conception takes place as God’s free act. The doctrine also distinguishes incarnation from adoption: God did not select an existing man and promote him into sonship. This is why the Church honors Mary as Theotokos and, with the Fifth Council, as “ever virgin.”⁵

How the councils guarded the confession

The councils did not add a second Jesus to the Gospels. They answered specific mistaken accounts of him, usually by drawing a boundary rather than offering an explanation. The Orthodox Church receives seven such councils as ecumenical, and each one touches the identity of Christ.

Nicaea, 325: true God

Arius of Alexandria taught that the Son, though exalted above all creatures, had a beginning. One of his key texts was Proverbs 8:22 in the Septuagint, where Wisdom says, “The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works” (Brenton). The council answered that the Son is “true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial [homoousios] with the Father,” and it anathematised the claim that “there once was when he was not.”⁶ Lewis Ayres warns that there was no single “Nicene” theology in 325; the creed’s meaning was argued over for decades.⁷

Constantinople, 381: the Creed and the complete humanity

The Second Council produced the creed Orthodox Christians still say at every Divine Liturgy. It confesses the Son as “begotten of the Father before all ages,” “true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father,” and the Holy Spirit as “the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified” (OCA translation).⁸ The Father is the one source of the Son and the Spirit. The Creed as the council issued it, and as the Orthodox Church uses it, says the Spirit proceeds from the Father; the words “and the Son” (Filioque) were added later in the West.

The council also condemned the Apollinarians. Apollinarius of Laodicea defended Christ’s deity but taught that the divine Word took the place of a human rational mind. Gregory of Nazianzus answered in his first letter to Cledonius: “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.”⁹

Ephesus, 431: one Son

The dispute between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople centered on the title Theotokos, “God-bearer” or “Mother of God.” Nestorius, wishing to protect the difference between the divine and the human, wrote that “the holy virgin is more accurately termed mother of Christ than mother of God.” Cyril replied that the Word “united to himself hypostatically flesh enlivened by a rational soul, and so became man,” and that this is why the fathers “dared to call the holy virgin, mother of God.”¹⁰ The title says nothing about Mary producing the divine nature. It identifies who her child is: God the Word made flesh.

The council judged that Cyril’s second letter agreed with the Creed of Nicaea and that Nestorius’s did not. The proceedings were disorderly: Cyril opened the council before John of Antioch and the Roman legates arrived. Peace came only in 433, when Cyril accepted John’s profession of faith, which speaks of “a union of two natures” and confesses “one Christ, one Son, one Lord.”¹¹ Historians continue to debate how far Nestorius himself held the views later called “Nestorian.”

Chalcedon, 451: one person in two natures

Eutyches, a monk of Constantinople, was condemned for blurring the natures after the union. Chalcedon rejected those who “concoct two natures of the Lord before the union but imagine a single one after the union,” and confessed “one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body,” known “in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation,” who “is not parted or divided into two persons.”¹² The first pair of adverbs guards the integrity of each nature; the second guards the unity of the person. The council also received Pope Leo’s Tome, which says that “each form does what is proper to it with the co-operation of the other.”¹³

Constantinople, 553 and 680 to 681: the crucified God and his human will

The Fifth Council read Chalcedon in the light of Cyril. It anathematised anyone who does not confess “that our lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified in his human flesh, is truly God and the Lord of glory and one of the members of the holy Trinity.”¹⁴ Orthodox Christians sing the same truth at every Liturgy in the hymn “Only-begotten Son,” which confesses Christ as “one of the Holy Trinity.”¹⁵

The Sixth Council, vindicating the teaching for which St Maximus the Confessor had suffered, confessed “two natural volitions or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion,” with “his human will following, and not resisting or struggling, rather in fact subject to his divine and all powerful will.”¹⁶ Gethsemane is the scene the council had in view: a real human will, freely and fully given to the Father.

Nicaea, 787: the face of the incarnate Word

The Seventh Council defended icons on christological grounds. Images of Christ, it said, provide “confirmation that the becoming man of the Word of God was real and not just imaginary.”¹⁷ The invisible God cannot be painted, but the Son who became visible can. For the Orthodox Church the icon is a confession of the incarnation.

Eastern and Oriental Orthodox: a family disagreement

It is inaccurate to call the Oriental Orthodox churches (Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian, Eritrean and Malankara) “monophysite” in the sense of teaching that Christ’s humanity was swallowed up by his divinity. They reject Eutyches. They did not accept Chalcedon, preferring Cyril’s formula mia physis tou Theou Logou sesarkomene, the one incarnate nature of God the Word, and they describe their position as miaphysite.

In 1989 the official Joint Commission of the two families of churches agreed at the Anba Bishoy Monastery in Egypt that Christ “is true God and true Man at the same time, perfect in His Divinity, perfect in His humanity.” In 1990, at Chambésy, it agreed that the natures “with their proper energies and wills” are united “without confusion, without change, without division and without separation,” distinguished “in thought alone,” and that “He Who wills and acts is always the one Hypostasis of the Logos incarnate.” It recommended lifting the old anathemas.¹⁸ {{debated: Whether these statements show that the two families share one faith is still debated}}: the churches have not fully received them, and the status of the later councils and of figures such as Dioscorus, Severus and Leo remains unresolved. The site’s article on what Chalcedon actually defined gives the background.

What the rejected alternatives lose

• Adoptionism makes Jesus a human being chosen or raised to the status of Son. It cannot account for preexistence, creation through Christ, or his glory with the Father “before the world was.”
• Arianism places the Son above all other creatures but still among them. Worship then ends on one who is not the true God, and a creature cannot give God’s own life.
• Docetism says Christ only seemed human or only seemed to suffer. It removes the human obedience, death and bodily resurrection at the center of the gospel.
• Apollinarianism protects unity by leaving Christ without a human mind. What is not assumed is not healed.
• Dividing Christ into two acting subjects, one divine and one human, leaves Mary the mother of a man joined to God, and separates the one who suffers from the one who saves.
• Confusing the natures after the union means Christ’s humanity no longer remains ours, and he is no longer consubstantial with us.

These labels describe positions. Ancient writers used shifting vocabularies, and their opponents preserved much of what we know about them, so a textbook category is not the same as everything a named person believed.¹⁹

Why salvation depends on who Christ is

The New Testament never treats the incarnation as a puzzle detached from redemption. The Son shared our flesh and blood “that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14–15). The Orthodox Church sings this victory every Pascha: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!”²⁰

The problem the Son came to heal is described in the Orthodox tradition as ancestral sin. “Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). The Orthodox Church in America summarises its teaching this way: “while everyone bears the consequences of the first sin, the foremost of which is death, only Adam and Eve are guilty of that sin.”²¹ Western teaching has been stated differently. St Augustine, reading the Latin in quo omnes peccaverunt, spoke of “that one man in whom all men sinned,” though the Catholic Catechism today also says that original sin “does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants.”²² The two churches still frame the matter differently, and the site’s article on original sin and ancestral sin sets out the comparison.

That is why Christ must be God. “I, even I, am the LORD, and besides Me there is no savior” (Isaiah 43:11). Salvation in the Orthodox understanding is communion with God, a sharing in his life that makes us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). The Fathers called this deification, or theosis. St Irenaeus wrote of the Word, “who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.” St Athanasius put it more briefly: “For He was made man that we might be made God.”²³ We become by grace what God is by nature; we never become God by essence. A creature, however exalted, could not give what it does not have. Catholic teaching receives the same patristic words, and the Catechism quotes Athanasius at this point.²⁴ See the site’s article on theosis for more.

That is also why Christ must be fully human. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). A divine visitor who never had a human mind, will, body and history could not restore human nature from within. The cross belongs to the one person of the Son, which is why Paul can say that the rulers “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). The divine nature does not die. The divine person truly tastes death in the humanity he made his own, and by doing so he breaks death open. Western traditions have often explained the cross mainly in terms of satisfaction or, in much Protestant theology, penal substitution. The Orthodox Church does not deny that Christ died “for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3), but it reads the cross chiefly as victory over death, healing and the restoration of humanity in the new Adam.

Modern non-Nicene views of Jesus

Latter-day Saints honor Jesus as divine, as the Savior and as the Son of God, and testify that his life “neither began in Bethlehem nor concluded on Calvary.” Their apostles describe him as “the Firstborn of the Father, the Only Begotten Son in the flesh, the Redeemer of the world.” Latter-day Saints teach that “the members of the Godhead are three separate beings,” that “the Father and the Son have tangible bodies of flesh and bones,” and that they are “one in purpose and doctrine.” They also teach that all human beings lived before birth as “the spirit children of God.”²⁵ The Nicene faith confesses something different: one God and one divine essence, with the Son eternally begotten from the Father’s own being, uncreated and without beginning, rather than the firstborn of many spirit children. The site’s cornerstone One God or a Council of Gods? compares the two carefully.

Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Jesus “was created by Jehovah God before everything else,” and that he is called the only-begotten Son because “Jesus alone was directly created by Jehovah.”²⁶ This is close to the position Nicaea rejected, and it rests on readings of Colossians 1:15 (“the firstborn over all creation”) and Proverbs 8:22 that the Fathers answered in the fourth century.

Muslims honor Jesus as the Messiah, born of the virgin Mary, a messenger of God and “His word.” The Qur’an says that the Messiah “was but a messenger of Allāh and His word which He directed to Mary and a soul [created at a command] from Him,” and warns, “do not say, ‘Three.’” In mainstream interpretation it also denies the crucifixion: “they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them” (Qur’an 4:171, 4:157, Sahih International).²⁷

Each of these views says true things about Jesus. The question is whether it can also account for creation through him, worship directed to him and his sharing of the divine name.

The strongest objections

“The first disciples did not think Jesus was God.”

Bart Ehrman argues that Jesus began as a human prophet and was later believed to have been exalted to divine status after his followers had visions of him alive, and that early Christians meant different things by calling him divine.²⁸ This is a serious argument, and the vocabulary of Nicaea did come later. But exaltation and preexistence sit side by side in the same early letters (Philippians 2:6–11 contains both), and Bauckham and others read 1 Corinthians 8:6 as placing Jesus within Israel’s confession of the one God. The Church claims only that Chalcedon faithfully states what the apostles confessed, not that they used its language.

“Jesus himself said the Father is greater.”

Jesus says, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), and he says of the last day that no one knows it, “nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). Arians and modern unitarians press these texts with good reason. The Fathers gave two replies. Some sayings concern the Son as man, who truly grew in wisdom and learned obedience. Others concern the Father as the source of the Son: the Son is from the Father, not the Father from the Son. Orthodox theology calls this the monarchy of the Father. It is not a ranking of two beings, since the Son has everything the Father has except being Father.

“Two natures in one person is a contradiction.”

Some philosophers argue that one subject cannot be both mortal and immortal. The councils do not explain how the union works; they set boundaries. A contradiction requires affirming and denying the same thing in the same respect, and saying that the Son is impassible in his divinity and suffers in his humanity does not do that. The mystery remains, but it is not nonsense.

“Chalcedon betrayed Cyril.”

The Oriental Orthodox objection is that “in two natures” sounds like Nestorius. It deserves a respectful hearing, since Cyril himself spoke of the one incarnate nature of God the Word. The Orthodox reply is that Chalcedon itself confessed “one and the same Son” and appealed to Cyril’s letters, and that the Fifth Council read it in Cyril’s sense. The 1989 and 1990 agreed statements suggest that both sides meant to confess the same Christ.

“The councils turned the Gospel into Greek philosophy.”

Latter-day Saints and some Protestant historians have argued that terms such as ousia and hypostasis imported philosophy into the faith. The councils did use philosophical words, but to protect biblical claims (the Son is God, he became man, he is one) against readings driven by philosophical assumptions of their own, such as Arius’s conviction that the one God could not share his being. The test is whether the councils’ words say what Scripture says.

What we can say confidently

• The New Testament presents Jesus as fully human in body, experience, mind, will, suffering, death and bodily resurrection.
• {{strong: The earliest Christian writings already speak of Jesus in language reserved for the one God of Israel and place him within God’s creative and saving work.}} Whether this amounts to worship of Jesus in the full sense is debated.
• Matthew and Luke both affirm a virginal conception by the Holy Spirit, and Matthew reads Isaiah 7:14 in its Septuagint form.
• Nicaea confessed the Son’s full deity, Constantinople his complete humanity, Ephesus the unity of his person, Chalcedon his two natures, the Fifth and Sixth Councils the crucified God and his human will, and the Seventh the reality of his incarnation shown in icons.
• The Creed as issued in 381 and used in the Orthodox Church confesses that the Spirit proceeds from the Father.
• In Orthodox teaching, salvation as healing and union with God depends on Christ being both truly God and truly human.

What remains disputed

• How quickly devotion to Jesus developed and how best to describe it (Hurtado, Bauckham, Dunn and Ehrman take different positions).
• The historical and literary questions surrounding the infancy narratives.
• What Arius, Nestorius and Eutyches themselves believed, as opposed to how their opponents described them.
• Whether the agreed statements of 1989 and 1990 are enough for communion between the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and how the later councils and the old anathemas should be handled.
• How Orthodox and Western accounts of ancestral or original sin, and of the atonement, finally relate to one another.
• No analogy fully explains the union of God and man in Christ. The councils state boundaries drawn from revelation, not a mechanism.

Conclusion

The one who meets us in the Gospels is neither a distant deity nor a messenger we can set aside. He touches lepers with a human hand, weeps at a friend’s grave and carries human flesh through death into life. Yet the hand belongs to the one through whom the world was made, and the tears are the tears of the eternal Son.

Because he is God, his grace opens communion with God. Because he is human, that communion does not erase our humanity; it heals it and fills it with glory. Christ saves no abstraction. He saves human beings, body and soul, by joining our life to his.

Notes

1. Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008); see also Gordon D. Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007). ↩
2. James D. G. Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence (Louisville: Westminster John Knox; London: SPCK, 2010). Dunn’s conclusion is summarised here from the publisher’s description and David B. Capes’s review (davidbcapes.com, 18 July 2015). ↩
3. Ignatius of Antioch, To the Ephesians 7, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, ANF vol. 1 (New Advent). The translation’s dash before “even Jesus Christ” is given here as a comma. ↩
4. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29 (Third Theological Oration), 19–20, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, NPNF2 vol. 7 (New Advent). ↩
5. Isaiah 7:14 in Lancelot C. L. Brenton, The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament (1844; eBible.org edition); RSV for the Hebrew-based rendering. Second Council of Constantinople (553), anathemas, in Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1 (papalencyclicals.net), which speaks of “Mary the holy mother of God and ever virgin.” ↩
6. Creed of the Council of Nicaea (325), in Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1 (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990); online at papalencyclicals.net. The translator’s bracketed Greek and Latin terms are omitted and capitals normalised. Proverbs 8:22 from Brenton. ↩
7. Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). ↩
8. “The Creed: The Symbol of Faith,” Orthodox Church in America (oca.org). The OCA’s The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, “Nicene Creed” (oca.org), notes that the creed is properly called the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. ↩
9. Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 101 (to Cledonius), trans. Browne and Swallow, NPNF2 vol. 7 (New Advent). Canon 1 of Constantinople (381) anathematises the Apollinarians: Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1. ↩
10. Nestorius, Second Letter to Cyril, and Cyril of Alexandria, Second Letter to Nestorius, in Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1 (Council of Ephesus). See John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy (Leiden: Brill, 1994; Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004). ↩
11. Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1, introduction to Ephesus and the Formula of Union (433). ↩
12. Definition of the Council of Chalcedon (451), in Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1. For the full acts, Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, trans., The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, 3 vols., Translated Texts for Historians 45 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005). ↩
13. Leo the Great, Letter 28 (Tome to Flavian), trans. Charles Lett Feltoe, NPNF2 vol. 12 (New Advent). ↩
14. Second Council of Constantinople (553), anathema 10, in Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1. On the Fifth Council’s Cyrilline reading of Chalcedon, see John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1975). ↩
15. The hymn is quoted in this translation in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 469: “you who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us!” ↩
16. Third Council of Constantinople (680–681), definition of faith, in Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1. ↩
17. Second Council of Nicaea (787), definition, in Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1. ↩
18. Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, First Agreed Statement (Anba Bishoy Monastery, 20–24 June 1989) and Second Agreed Statement (Chambésy, 23–28 September 1990), paras. 4, 5 and 10 of the second statement; texts at ecupatria.org and the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate (dss-syriacpatriarchate.org). ↩
19. Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1, From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451), 2nd rev. ed., trans. John Bowden (London: Mowbrays, 1975). ↩
20. “Selected Liturgical Hymns,” Orthodox Church in America (oca.org), the Paschal troparion. ↩
21. “Original Sin,” Questions and Answers, Orthodox Church in America (oca.org). ↩
22. Augustine, On the Merits and Remission of Sins 1.17 (NPNF chapter numbering), trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, rev. Benjamin B. Warfield, NPNF1 vol. 5 (New Advent); Vulgate of Romans 5:12; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 404–405 (vatican.va). ↩
23. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5, preface, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, ANF vol. 1; Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54.3, trans. Archibald Robertson, NPNF2 vol. 4 (both New Advent). ↩
24. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 460 (vatican.va). ↩
25. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gospel Topics, “Jesus Christ” (quoting “The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles,” 1 January 2000) and “Godhead”; Gospel Principles, ch. 2, “Our Heavenly Family” (churchofjesuschrist.org); see also Doctrine and Covenants 130:22. ↩
26. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Enjoy Life Forever!, lesson 15, “Who Is Jesus?” (jw.org). ↩
27. Qur’an 4:157, 4:171, Sahih International translation (Quran.com). ↩
28. Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014); summary from the author’s own description at bartehrman.com. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982. Revised Standard Version for Isaiah 7:14 (Hebrew-based rendering).
• Brenton, Lancelot C. L., trans. The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament. London: Samuel Bagster, 1844. eBible.org edition.
• Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 1, Nicaea I to Lateran V. London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990. (Nicaea, Constantinople I, Ephesus with the letters of Cyril and Nestorius and the Formula of Union, Chalcedon, Constantinople II and III, Nicaea II.)
• Price, Richard, and Michael Gaddis, trans. The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon. 3 vols. Translated Texts for Historians 45. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005.
• Ignatius of Antioch. To the Ephesians. Trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885.
• Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies, book 5. Trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885.
• Athanasius. On the Incarnation of the Word. Trans. Archibald Robertson. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 4. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1892.
• Gregory of Nazianzus. Orations 29; Letter 101. Trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 7. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1894.
• Leo the Great. Letter 28 (Tome). Trans. Charles Lett Feltoe. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 12. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1895.
• Augustine. On the Merits and Remission of Sins, book 1. Trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, rev. Benjamin B. Warfield. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 5. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1887.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Orthodox Church in America. “The Creed: The Symbol of Faith”; “Selected Liturgical Hymns”; “Original Sin” (Questions and Answers). oca.org.
• Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches. First Agreed Statement (Anba Bishoy, 1989); Second Agreed Statement (Chambésy, 1990).
• McGuckin, John A. St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Reprinted as Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004.
• Meyendorff, John. Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1975.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997. Paras. 404–405, 456–483.
• Dunn, James D. G. Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010.
• Ehrman, Bart D. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. New York: HarperOne, 2014.
• Fee, Gordon D. Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007.
• Grillmeier, Aloys. Christ in Christian Tradition. Vol. 1, From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451). 2nd rev. ed. Trans. John Bowden. London: Mowbrays, 1975.
• Hurtado, Larry W. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.

Sources from the traditions discussed

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gospel Topics: “Jesus Christ”; “Godhead.” Gospel Principles, ch. 2. Doctrine and Covenants 130:22. churchofjesuschrist.org.
• Jehovah’s Witnesses. Enjoy Life Forever! An Interactive Bible Course, lesson 15, “Who Is Jesus?” jw.org.
• The Qur’an. Sahih International translation. Quran.com.