Trinitarian. Tertullian and others had understood God as Trinitarian in terms of God’s relationship to history. But Nicaea pushed beyond this to affirm that God was Trinitarian in eternity, before and apart from creation. This remarkable innovation in church teaching57 led to the development of a distinction between the immanent Trinity, God in eternity apart from creation, and the economic Trinity, God as revealed and active in history.58 This problematic but important distinction helped the church understand how God could be living, involved in history, and radically transcendent to it. The affirmation of the Trinitarian nature of God at the council of Nicaea was in effect a new beginning that came to provide the framework for Christian understanding of God and Jesus Christ in centuries to come.59
From Nicaea to Chalcedon
The council of Nicaea did not end the Arian controversy. Decades of debate and polemic followed until roughly 360,60 although Arianism continued to be present in the church long afterwards and still is today. However, after 360 the focus of controversy shifted from Jesus’ relationship to God to the nature of Jesus’ person. The questions now became, given that Jesus was fully divine, was he also fully human and if so to what extent, and how were his human and divine natures related? Disputes over these questions led to the council of Chalcedon in 451 and continued afterwards.61
These issues first surfaced at the synod of Alexandria of 362 in connection with the Christology of Apollinaris.62 Athanasius had argued against Arians that the Logos, which came to be known as the second person of the Trinity, assumed flesh. Appollinaris carried this Logos/sarx Christology further to the point of denying that Jesus had a human soul. In this way he wanted to exclude any possibility of there being a conflict between Jesus’ human and divine will, “thus safeguarding the sinlessness of Christ, without which there was no redemption from sin.”63 But opposition soon arose on the grounds that if the Logos did not assume a fully human nature, then that which was not assumed was not healed. To be human is to be subject to change. As the divine was understood to be immutable, the two seemed mutually exclusive.64 How could Jesus be both at once? Yet it was only by their coming together in the one person of Jesus that salvation in its fullest sense had been effected. For most theologians involved in this debate, the fundamental saving significance of Jesus lay in the appearance in his person of a new reality in which God and humanity were united while still distinct.65 In the Christ event, which included Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection, the new reality promised in his preaching of the kingdom of God became present in his person. The presence of this in his person is the basis of the hope for its coming in fullness in the future.66 The question was, how did this come about and how was it to be understood? Three major positions developed in this regard: the schools of Antioch and Alexandria in the East, and the Western tradition influenced by Augustine, which found expression at Chalcedon through Pope Leo the Great.
The greatest theologian of the Antioch school was Theodore of Mopsuestia, bishop of Antioch for 36 years until his death in 428.67 Theodore emphasized Jesus’ full humanity against Apollinaris. The Logos was not subject to Jesus’ human limitations. It became incarnate in Jesus by uniting itself to him at his conception and indwelling his person. This indwelling of the Logos in Jesus was continuous with the inspiration experienced by prophets and others before him but distinct in degree. Jesus’ resurrection revealed that the Logos and his person had always been a functional unity.68 For Theodore this was a moral unity occurring in the conjunction of their wills. The second person of the Trinity became incarnate in Jesus through Jesus continually choosing to follow the former’s inspiration. This was made possible by the special indwelling of the Logos, but it only happened through the decision making of the human being Jesus. Theodore’s focus was on the particular life and achievement of the individual Jesus who at times struggled to overcome temptation and follow God’s will. This was essential to his triumph over sin and evil. The whole of Jesus’ life and public ministry has redemptive significance. It culminates in his resurrection, in which the power of sin and death are broken in principle as a result of his moral obedience, achieved through the indwelling of the Logos and the “active agency” of Jesus’ humanity.69
Theodore insisted against Apollinaris that Jesus was only able to effect salvation because he had been fully human and lived a genuinely human life. But Theodore’s account of the unity of the Logos with Jesus’ humanity remains problematic. For Theodore and others in the school of Antioch there seem to be two subjects in the one person of Jesus Christ. The Logos inspires Jesus and identifies with him in his resurrection, but this was a functional unity. The danger here is that Jesus becomes only a moral hero rather than the person in whom a new reality appears within history, in which God and humanity exist in a reconciled and new state of differentiated unity. Jesus can only be the Christ if he is a moral exemplar. But as the Christ he is not simply a great person but a new person, in whom a new reality is present in which others can participate through faith and in him. Theodore and the school of Antioch celebrated the arrival of this new reality in Jesus but had difficulty conceptualizing the unity of his person.
The leading theologian of the Alexandrian school was Cyril of Alexandria (378–444), bishop of Alexandria for 32 years. Cyril followed the Logos/sarx way of understanding Jesus’ person70 but insisted on the fullness of Jesus’ humanity. The unity of Jesus’ person is central for Cyril. For him the “Gospels bear witness that there is one subject or person in Christ.”71 This person resulted from the Logos uniting itself to a human nature so that the two became one concrete reality. This happened through the initiative of the Logos. For Cyril Jesus is fully human but not simply human. He is a divine person, the second person of the Trinity, who chose “to live in the human condition.”72 The line of interpretation he follows stresses the newness and uniqueness of Christ73 and the freedom of God to act creatively to rescue humanity from sin and evil. With Jesus the Logos has entered history in a new way, becoming incarnate in Jesus’ person. The Logos did not change in this but did something new. It became the active subject of a human life.74 The result was an “indissoluble union”75 of two distinct natures, an ontological rather than a functional or moral unity. Cyril conceives it as occurring more on the level of being than will.
How was this union effected? This was a mystery.76 But Cyril conceived it as the paradigm of the salvation it effects. Cyril understood salvation as divinization, the transformation of humanity through union with God so as to no longer be vulnerable to sin and death. This was effected by Christ taking “what was ours to be his very own so that we might have all that was his.”77 The incarnation happens by the creative power of the Logos healing the humanity it took on as it assumed it, so that the two were able to become one in Jesus’ person while remaining distinct. As a result Jesus’ person becomes the paradigm of the fullness of humanity. By assuming human nature
