Christ
True God and True Man
14 passages, 6 quoted here · Against: Docetism, Ebionitism
Christ is both truly God and truly human, as the early writers put it long before the Council of Chalcedon.
Where they stood
Each row is one claim. Each name is a writer, placed at the date of the passage. Select a name to read what they said.
5 of the 5 writers here teach: “The same one is God and a perfect human being.” They answer a rival view: “Christ is man only.”
teaches it partly rejects it later writer, summary only
Apostolic FathersApostolicBefore NicaeaBefore NicaeaNicaea to ChalcedonNicaea to 451After ChalcedonAfter 451
The same one is God and a perfect human being5 teach
Christ is man only1 reject
He is God without true flesh1 reject
100 AD200300400500Nicaea 325
Where this divides churches today: After the incarnation, is Christ one nature, or two natures in one person, and how is the union to be stated?
What each writer said, earliest first
There is one physician, both flesh and spirit, begotten and unbegotten, God in a human being, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first subject to suffering and then beyond suffering: Jesus Christ our Lord.
Read this passage
Greek
Εἰώθασιν γάρ τινες δόλῳ πονηρῷ τὸ ὄνομα περιφέρειν, ἄλλα τινὰ πράσσοντες ἀνάξια θεοῦ: οὕς δεῖ ὑμᾶς ὡς θηρία ἐκκλίνειν: εἰσὶν γὰρ κύνες λυσσῶντες, λαθροδῆκται: οὓς δεῖ ὑμᾶς φυλάσσεσθαι ὄντας δυσθεραπεύτους.
For the works Christ performed after the baptism, and especially the signs, revealed His deity concealed in flesh and convinced the world. For being God and at the same time also perfect man, He Himself guaranteed to us His two substances: the one indeed His deity through the signs during the three years after the…
Read this passage
Greek
Οὐδεμία ἀνάγκη τοῖς νοῦν ἔχουσιν, ἐξ ὧν μετὰ τὸ βάπτισμα ὁ Χριστὸς ἔπραξε, παριστᾶν τὸ ἀληθὲς καὶ ἀφανταστὸν τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ καὶ τοῦ σώματος, τῆς καθ' ἡμᾶς ἀνθρωπίνης φύσεως.
For this way of life was not handed down to them as an earthly discovery, as I said. Nor do they think it worth guarding so carefully as a merely human idea. Nor have they been entrusted with a stewardship of human mysteries.
Read this passage
Greek
Οὐ γὰρ ἐπιγειον, ὡς ἔφην, εὕρημα τοῦτ̓ αὐτοῖς παρεδόθη, οὐδὲ θνητὴν ἐπίνοιαν φυλάσσειν οὕτως ἀξιοῦσιν ἐπιμελῶς, οὐδὲ ἀνθρωπίνων οἰκονομίαν μυστηρίων πεπίστευνται.
1. As it has been clearly demonstrated that the Word, who existed in the beginning with God, by whom all things were made, who was also always present with mankind, was in these last days, according to the time appointed by the Father, united to His own workmanship, inasmuch as He became a man liable to suffering, it…
Read this passage
We affirm that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God the Creator, was manifested in a true body, yet with the divinity of the Word mixed into that very flesh, so that He is also God according to the Scriptures (John 1:1-14; Colossians 1:15-20).
Read this passage
At this point I am free to collect arguments even from other heretical groups. Proof drawn from an opponent is especially firm, because it lets the truth be confirmed by the very enemies of truth themselves.
Read this passage
Other passages filed here (8)