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Session 5 – Christology (Abstract of Systematic Theology by James P. Boyce)

Video: Session 5 – Christology

Abstract of Systematic Theology by James Petigru Boyce
Session 5 – chapters 25-27
Subject: Christology
Wednesday Logos – 7-1-26

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Opening Prayer

All right, everyone, we’re going to get rolling. Congratulations. That means you didn’t melt today. All right, let’s open with prayer. Father, thanks so much for your Word. Thanks so much for this time. Help us to think your thoughts after you as we look at the person of Christ. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Christology and the States of Christ

All right, we’re talking about the topic of Christology tonight. That is our topic, and all of those things on the screen say the same thing. So the Greek word is theanthropos, and then it’s transliterated. The Latin is Deus homo, God-man, and then the English, hopefully you can read that: the God-man. So last, well really two weeks ago, we looked at Jesus being fully God. This week, at least for the first part, we’re going to spend some time looking at him being fully man.

When we talk about Christology, there’s a couple different categories that it gets broken down to. One of the categories that it gets broken down to is the states of Christ. And I actually think there’s really a third state, which Meg essentially said would be the state of pre-existence. The state of humiliation really begins when the Son assumes a full human nature. That’s why we’re talking about him being fully man. That includes the conception and the birth. When we talk about the early church, and have different heresies sneak in, it actually dealt more with his humanity. They were concerned with saying, and giving too much to his humanity, or denying it.

The Full Humanity of Christ

One of the earliest was Docetism. The idea was that his body was illusory. He seemed to have a body. He appeared to have a body. And so it was such an early, I’d say, heresy or challenge, that we even get it in the Scriptures themselves. So we get 1 John: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

(1 John 4:2)

He had a normal human birth. Luke 2:7: “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger.” All right, so he had a normal human birth. He had a childhood. We could look at Luke, if you want, look at Luke chapter 2. This is when the angels appeared to the shepherds. He grew mentally and physically. A couple chapters later, Luke 2. What does it say in verse 52? “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” In Matthew 13, coming to his hometown, he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son?” He had human ancestry, I think I mentioned that already. “The son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” Right, so he had a human family tree. He had a spirit, just like people do. Let’s look at Mark chapter 2. It says, “And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit”—verse 8—“that they thus questioned within themselves.” Others called him a man, Acts 2:22 and Romans 8:3.

And then he had weaknesses and limitations. As a human, he was subject to the same weaknesses we are. What does it say in Hebrews 4:15? “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” So he had weaknesses and limitations. He would get tired, John 4:6. He would get thirsty, on the cross, right? “I thirst,” John 19:28. He would get hungry. He would sleep. He would lack strength. Remember he’s trying to carry his cross? What happened? He didn’t have the strength; they had to get Simon of Cyrene. Then you have the virgin birth, which is really, we see both the human and the divine. We see that in Matthew 1:18, Luke 1. We’re not going to spend a long time there tonight, but it matters.

Why He Had to Be Fully Man

Why did he have to be fully man? Substituting one thing for another. Well, what do we learn in the New Testament, especially Hebrews? Like the bulls and the goats, do they really take away sin? No. Okay. So what would appropriately deal with human sin? A fully human substitute. So if he’s taking our place he needs to be at least equal. He can be greater, but he can’t be less. The garden really was just a testing ground in the beginning. It was to spread. Adam failed. Christ succeeds. He is truly the second Adam. Also, he is an example and pattern in life for us to follow. If he’s fully human, we can look at him, and so he was tempted. He did struggle, he did have sorrows, he had heartbreak, he had those things. So an example and pattern in life. And then lastly, it’s a pattern for our redeemed bodies. He dies, he gets a glorified body; well, that’s a pattern for the body that we one day will have. And yet with all of that, he was sinless. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every way has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” 1 Peter 2:22: “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.” 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

The State of Exaltation

So that’s the state of humiliation. Now let’s talk just briefly about the state of exaltation. It has maybe three aspects or three parts to it. The first would be the resurrection. So it commences with the resurrection. Guess when it ends? It doesn’t. So, he gets resurrected. Then what comes next? He ascends, right? Acts chapter 1. And then, here’s a word that most of you may—you’ve probably heard, but you might not have heard it in this context. Then there’s session. Does anyone know what session means? Like, the court’s now in session. It’s from the Latin. The Latin will probably help you a little bit. It means sitting or being seated. So where is he seated? At the right hand of the Father, interceding, ruling, and answering prayers. All right, so that is the idea of the states of Christ.

Christological Heresies

I’m going to talk a little bit about Christological heresies. Last time I talked mainly about one. Do you guys remember which one I talked about? Modalism, and with it Patripassianism. Because if you’re a modalist then there’s only one person, so you believe Patripassianism—patri, the Father, passio, suffering. The Father suffers on the cross. Now, most people know of the three kind of groups of people that are mentioned—they’re not mentioned as such in the New Testament, but we have these heresies that arise as the church tries to explain how Jesus is fully God and fully man.

Apollinarianism. You like that image? All right, so he basically believed like an incomplete humanity. I mean, it gets rejected pretty quick, but he believes that Christ had a human body but not a human mind or spirit. Right? So it’s the divine nature coming into the human body. Now if you go to any Bible study for any length of time you’ll run into people wrestling with this. They realized it was not just our human body that needed salvation and needed to be represented by Christ in his redemptive work, but our mind and soul as well. What people are trying to figure out is how, so if he’s fully man and fully divine and he has a human nature and a divine nature, how do those go together?

In Apollinarianism, there’s no full human nature, just a human body, no human mind or spirit. When we get to Nestorianism—you want to guess who? Yeah, Nestorius. So they didn’t usually have sinister motives. But Nestorius taught that Jesus exists in two separate persons. So instead of two natures in one person, Jesus exists in two separate persons: one divine person, the eternal Son of God, one human person. These two persons were said to be united in a close moral, voluntary, or external association, but not in a single unified person. Kind of weird. Again, he’s trying to figure out, okay, there’s two somethings. Well, what does he do? He makes it two people or two persons instead of two natures.

And that’s Eutychianism. Anyone guess? Yeah, Eutyches, right? Not the guy in Acts, okay? Also known as monophysitism. Why is that? Monos meaning one, physis meaning nature. Before the union there were two natures. So before the human and divine come together there’s two natures, but after the union the human nature is absorbed. What does this do? Well, it confuses or absorbs the human nature into the divine, so one nature. There’s one other one, but we’ll take a break. We’re going to get into that. I will answer that. I think you’ll be satisfied with the answer too. Good question.

A Short Break

[audio unclear — class break]

All right, we’re going to keep rolling. There’s going to be a quiz at the end today, so I hope you all are taking good notes.

Monothelitism and Two Wills

All right, there’s one more that’s kind of in a different category. So we had, let’s go back, really Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, and Eutychianism trying to understand how do those two natures go together. There’s one more that really doesn’t deal with natures. It more deals with the will. Monothelitism. The idea is Christ has two natures, but the human nature supposedly did not have its own distinct will. Now, why are the key reasons it was rejected? Here’s the key reason it was rejected: if he doesn’t have a human will, he doesn’t have a full human nature. What was going on in the garden? “Not my will, but yours be done.” Is that a conflict within the single person? It’s between the divine will of the Father and the human will of the Son. Is this like the same will within the single person Christ? No, because there’s two wills. Yes, but everyone agrees that if there’s a divine will that he’s distinguishing from, then that would have to be a human will. Yeah, not disagreeing. That’s probably not the best word. Suggesting that, or stating that there’s another will. You have to be careful with the language. The same divine will of Jesus is the same divine will of the Father? Yes. Yep. Otherwise you’d really be getting into some problems in the Trinity. If you deny the human will, you’re essentially denying the full humanity. So the church affirmed what we call dyothelitism, two wills. Christ has two wills, one divine, one human.

Grudem says this distinction of two wills and two centers of consciousness helps us understand how Jesus could learn things and yet know all things, how he could be tired and yet uphold the universe. So hopefully having this view in front of you as I talk about some of these things will help maybe click some things in place. Yeah, Meg? Yes, yep. And hopefully that kind of shows you what that looks like. So you have a divine nature, the F stands for Father, S is the Son, H.S. Holy Spirit, right? Then you have the person of Christ. So let’s talk about that. So this is the theanthropos, the God-man, 100% divine nature. You can call it a God nature if you want. That’s where we’re going to get. We’re going to end up there, but he still has two distinct wills. Yeah. We would say the human will is subject to the divine will.

The God-Man and Chalcedon

Or we might say, how can the infinite reside in a human body? That’s what we’re trying to figure out an answer to. When we talk about the incarnation, we talk about the Logos, right? The Word. Literally Logos. And the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. So the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, took on a human nature. Not a transmutation. That would be where it’s trying to absorb it or something. No, there’s still a distinction. They’re separate. In the incarnation the Logos does not unite himself with a human person, but he unites himself with a human nature. So when the eternal Son of God becomes man, there’s no transmutation occurring. So it means there’s no change or mixing of the natures. God did not turn into a human being. The divine nature remains divine, and the human nature remains human, in the one person of Jesus Christ. This is why we say Jesus is the theanthropos, it’s the easiest way to say it, the God-man. He is truly God and truly man at the same time, in one person.

Yeah. But different than the Chalcedonian Creed, which Max just asked about. So I’ll wait till you get it passed to you. And this is what the church confessed. We can read it.

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.

(Chalcedonian Definition, AD 451)

So, against the view of Apollinaris, that Christ did not have a human mind or soul, we have the statement that he was truly man of a reasonable soul and body, consubstantial with us according to the manhood, and all things like unto us. The word consubstantial meaning having the same nature or substance. In opposition to the view of Nestorianism, that Christ was two persons united in one body, we have the words, indivisibly, inseparably, concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons. And then against the monophysitism that Christ had only one nature and that his human nature was lost in the union with the divine nature, we have the words, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved. The human and the divine natures were not confused or changed when Christ became man, but the human nature remained a truly human nature, and the divine nature remained a truly divine nature.

What does this statement do positively? The human nature retains its distinctive characteristics, and the divine nature retains its distinctive characteristics. Finally, it affirms that whether we can understand it or not, these two natures are united together in the one person of Christ. When the Chalcedonian definition says that the two natures of Christ occur together in one person and one subsistence, that Greek word translated as subsistence is the word hypostasis, or you could translate it being. And thus a lot of times you’ll hear the proper view referred to as the hypostatic union. Well, what is being united? Well, the divine and the human. The hypostasis, or the being, or the subsistence, being united together where? In the person of Christ. So this phrase simply means the union of Christ’s human and divine nature. So if you hear the hypostatic union, you probably will at some point, hopefully, that’s what it’s talking about. It’s really trying to explain the proper view of the two natures coming together.

Kenosis and Philippians 2

If we kind of go back just for a second, because there were a couple of questions that sort of deal with this from the last time, this sort of gets into views of Christ’s humiliation. Because there’s different views of, okay, obviously we agree he’s on this earth, he was born fully man, but what does that look like? What does it look like for him to be fully man and fully God? The key verse, so let’s just look at it, is in Philippians. Philippians starting in chapter 2, verse 5:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

(Philippians 2:5–11)

So the thing that people focus on is “emptied himself” in verse 7. What does that mean? Like, what is the emptying mean? Now, when we hit that in Philippians 2, probably at least a few months back, we kind of talked about it. But it really gets into this idea of how does Christ’s humanity and Christ’s deity work together on this earth? What did he do with his attributes? Were they present? If they were present, were they fully present? Or partially present? So there’s different views. Now, to be clear, for the first 1800 years of the church, no one ever took verse 7 to mean he divested himself of his divine attributes. In part, because to do that would be to commit some of these errors that we’ve been talking about, and basically he wouldn’t be fully God, right? He has to be fully God. If that’s what we see in the Scriptures, that’s what we have to say. Then we have to say, okay, well then how does that work? What does that look like as it’s carried out?

And so there’s different views on it. The kenotic view is the idea that the Logos, Jesus, gave up all divine attributes, or some of them. Well, which ones did he empty himself of? Well, like the ones that would kind of make him God, like omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. Some say he gave them up. Others say he didn’t give them up, even though he had them, he just acted like he didn’t have them. Like, oh, who, me? I mean, I guess that’s possible. It’s potentially a little odd. How is that different than other views? Well, the veiling, where Jesus’ glory is veiled, is different than saying he voluntarily acted as if he did not have them. Well, Jesus did have them. He wasn’t acting as if he didn’t have them. He still had them, and he used them as the Father willed.

But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Well, so then the question obviously is, then how can he be omniscient? But I’m presenting to you that this understanding of his two natures addresses it clearly. So in his humanity he can be said not to know that day. Does Jesus get tired and sleep? Does Jesus get tired and hungry? Yes. So then the Jehovah’s Witness will be like, well then Jesus isn’t God. Well, that’s Jesus in his humanity. In his divine nature, he does not get hungry, he does not get tired, he does not get sleepy, he does know the day or the hour. The problem with some views of this passage and other ones is you’re really back to the classical view regarding kenosis. Did he have the attributes or did he not? The classical view is he had them. The emptying is taking the form of a servant, not subtracting deity.

The Pre-Incarnate Christ

This mission was a rescue mission. One person I think also was asking, which really goes back to the states of Christ about the pre-incarnate Christ. Did the pre-incarnate Christ have a body? What do you all think? The pre-incarnate Christ—no, we’re trying to understand his pre-existence. So you say he didn’t have a body? What body did he have? I’m not going to get into a tangent. It’s good enough for me to say that.

Think about the covenant with Abraham. Now if you haven’t read your Bible recently or you haven’t read it carefully, you might have missed this, but it’s actually there. God appears. Like God’s not like a little fire in a bush or something. Or a cloud, right? I mean, so he’s taking—the theophany is an appearance, right? We have these appearances and sometimes it’s possible that it’s the Father or it’s possible it’s the Son. It’s possible, I guess you could argue the Spirit. The visitors with Abraham, you know, the three people show up. Now you can argue that’s just a theophany, which is fine. Like God took on human appearance. Not in the body that he now has. He didn’t get that body until he was conceived and born. So at times, he took on the form of a body. Just like the angels can appear. In the incarnation he takes on human nature, he takes on a body, and you would think, I can’t wait to get out of this thing, but no—like he still has that glorified human body.

I think that, to answer the question, did the pre-incarnate Christ—you know the Logos, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”—he at times appeared to have a body. You become flesh if you already were flesh? What’s that? You become flesh if you already were flesh. That’s the point. The Word became flesh. If he already was permanently flesh, that language doesn’t work the same way.

The Angel of the Lord

We can do this in just a couple minutes maybe. Why don’t we just look at the Angel of Yahweh, or the Angel of the Lord, just briefly. We’ll see how this goes. It’s been a few weeks since I reviewed it, but let’s look. So this is Sarai, Abraham’s wife, this is Hagar, right? Sarai sends Hagar away. It says, the angel of the Lord, verse 7, Genesis 16, found her by a spring of water in the wilderness. “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” The angel of the Lord said to her, “Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction.” That’s the language of God himself.

The sacrifice of Isaac, Genesis 22, verse 11: “But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’” You realize, like, this is a pretty key moment. Then to Exodus, we just mentioned it, the burning bush, Exodus 3. “And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.” Again, pretty key time in biblical history. It could just be the angel of the Lord who is also Yahweh. So you have that. On and on we could go. We actually have a couple minutes. Let’s look at Judges 2. Now, do you guys agree that the Angel of the Lord is a pretty key figure in the Old Testament? I mean, as you mentioned, the Angel of the Lord, the Angel of the Lord, the Angel of the Lord. Well, what happens when you get to Judges 2?

Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.’”

(Judges 2:1)

There’s some pretty strong claims for something that God himself claims over and over and over again in the Old Testament. I, the Lord, brought you out of Egypt. Well, why is the angel camping on his ground here? Well, no, it makes perfect sense if the angel is the pre-incarnate Christ, if it’s the second person of the Trinity. Then the angel can definitely say that. Jude 5, depending on what version you have, some versions say the Lord led you out of Egypt, but some versions and manuscripts, some reliable manuscripts, actually have Jesus. Jesus who led you out of Egypt. You got the pre-incarnate right there. And how did he lead them out? Let’s see. We’re out of time. There’s some more stuff in Judges. We could spend a whole lot of time looking at it. Even if you just think of the fiery furnace, at a minimum, a theophany, but very likely a Christophany, that you’re seeing the second member of the Trinity take on human form, be in there with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Amen.