REL 123 Midterm Research Paper

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Apr 3, 2024

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Ly 1 Beverly Ly Father Lucius REL-123 CA02 March 11, 2022 Jesus’s Two Nature As known by majority Jesus plays a significant role in Christianity, many will recognize him as the man on a the cross, the son of God, while others may know him as Jesus of Nazareth a preacher and a religious leader from history, but as always, a question arises and that is who exactly is Jesus? Which brings us Christology, starting with the opening of Jesus’ question to his disciples, “Who do you say that I am? To figure out his identity and purpose (Mueller, 106). According to sacred scriptures and other documents Jesus is said to be the “divine Son, the second person of the Trinity,” he is the savior to humanity, the bridge that brings us to God, and that he is God who became human to bring them salvation : an opportunity to redeem themselves and reconnect with God (Albl, 289-291). This would lead to Jesus’ two natures, which brings many discussions and debate on whether he was fully human, a living shell for God or just a divine being. However, a known fact is that Jesus was indeed a human being that roamed the lands of earth, as seen throughout the New Testament Jesus lived and acted like a human, he has the urges of a human being such as hunger, thirst, and feelings of a human, it also persists that Jesus was a “human born with no sin”(Johnston). He grew up in the same conditions as any other Palestinian Jew would’ve, he also had temptations as other men would have, but there was no corruption seen. Although he is like every other Jew that was out there, he was known a Jesus himself, he stood out from the rest even though he was living the same life as those around him. As said Jesus is fully human, but he

Ly 2 is also divine and is God specifically the second person of the Trinity, the son. The “spiritual life of Jesus has led Christians to see him only as a human being, but as a human surrounded with divinity (King). Just as the New Testament shows and insists that Jesus is human, it also insists he is God, that he forgives sins just as God and as said before he was born with no sin or has no sin (Johnston). Which can only mean that he is divine because only God has no sin, whereas humans are sinful, beings that are tempted by curiosity to defy God’s words. Other instances include him being called “Lord” and him a human who “knows all things” and many more (Slick). This is what makes Jesus divine because who besides God can know everything and is sinless, he is infinite the being that created humans, the one who gave us the knowledge that we have, but the only one who knows absolutely everything, which Jesus does. Therefore, the nature of Jesus is not just human or just God, not half of each, not one or the other, but both human and divinity in one being called Jesus, which is called hypostatic union. The Church had taken a long time to understand and figure and come up with a doctrine to understand how the human and divinity in Jesus relate, but through the Council of Constantinople to the Council of Chalcedon, long amounts of time developing and debating then came with a “statement that affirms that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine, not partly one or the other...” (Mueller, 123-124). Through the struggles and many different ideas and interpretations of how the two work together or relate the hypostatic union was able to help them rule out inaccurate explanations. Through the Council of Chalcedon, it was able to confirm the distinction of each Jesus’ natures but not deny the fact that they are one and are inseparable. With all the debates of Jesus’ natures there are controversies or errors that are taught by other groups. Some of those errors includes that Jesus was “adopted” by God and was not God descending to becoming a human, or that Jesus was God and was not fully a human being. As for

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