False Views Of The Incarnation

FALSE VIEWS OF THE INCARNATION
In coming to terms with the person of Christ, the church wrestled against Greek dualism that said, "Spirit is good and flesh is bad." This led to a number of ideas regarding the incarnation. The church was forced to examine its beliefs regarding the person of Jesus in the setting of these divergent teachings.

Party|Date|Reference|Human Nature|Divine Nature|
Docetic|60|1 John 4:1-3|Deny|Affirm|
Ebionite|120|Irenaeus|Affirm|Deny|
Arian|325|Condemned at Nicea|Affirm|Reduce|
Apollinarian|381|Condemned at Constantinople|Reduce|Affirm|
Nestorian|431|Condemned by Ephesus|Held that Christ was two persons|
Eutychian|451|Condemned by Chalcedon and Constantinople|Christ had one mixed nature, neither fully human or fully divine|
Orthodox|33|Affirmed throughout|Christ is one person, at the same time fully human and fully divine| The Docetic Heresy.
One of the sects of Gnosticism was Docetism. The term comes from the Greek word dokew (dokeo), “to seem.” It deals with the issue of appearance versus reality. It stated that Christ's appearance on earth was not real. It maintained that His bodily appearance was only a hallucination. John's first epistle seems to reflect a rebuke against an early form of this teaching.

2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. (1 John 4:2-3).

Why is it important to believe that Jesus came in the flesh? There are several reasons.

He came in the flesh to die for sins. 1 Peter 3:18 says that He was put to death in the flesh. If Jesus did not come in the flesh, then He could not take upon His own body the penalty for our sins. He could not die for us if He were not flesh, because God cannot die.

He came in the flesh to be a mediator: For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). If Jesus were not fully man in human flesh, then He is not qualified to be a mediator between God and man.

He came in the flesh to identify with man: For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Because Jesus came in the flesh, we can know that He has gone through the same problems and struggles that we experience. He knows and understands our situation.

Ebionism.
The Greek term Ebionaioi (Ebionaioi) means “poor men.” The Ebionites were the theological opposites of the Docetics. They held that Jesus was a man who was born like any other man, but who was adopted into God's family and given the title “Son of God.”

(The Ebionites had a large contingent of Jewish Christians.) The Ebionites also taught that Jewish Christians should continue to keep the Old Testament law—some included the Gentiles in this mandate as well. As such, they were something of a renewal of the Judaizers whom Paul confronted in his Epistle to the Galatians. Irenaeus, in his book Against Heresies, noted that the Ebionites recognized only the Gospel of Matthew out of all the New Testament writings. There is today a resurgence of Ebionism in much of the modern Messianic Movement. There is a tendency among some of those in this movement to move away from the deity of Christ and to seek to place people back under the law.

Arius.
One of the early controversies raged over the teachings of Arius who concluded that God could not have become flesh because a good God cannot become bad flesh. He therefore concluded that the Son had been created by the Father.

He said that if Christ were considered to be God, then there would be more than one God and this would be polytheism. In defense of his position, Arius was able to cite Tertullian as authenticating his teaching—Tertullian did teach that Christ became God while Arius never admitted to the divinity of Jesus prior to the incarnation.

Alexander and Athanasius, two of the church fathers, maintained that Christ was one in substance with the Father. The resulting creed that was adopted at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325 described Christ as “God of very God” (Qeoj evk Qeou) and as of the same nature (o`moiousiaj - homoiusias, from two Greek words meaning “same” and “nature or substance). [4] The creed rejected the teachings of Arius that claimed Jesus was a created being and thus, those teachings were proclaimed to be heretical. The Christology of today's Jehovah's Witnesses reflects the same heresy.
[4] o`moiaj is the word for “same” while ouvsi,aj carries the ides of “substance” or “estate.”

Apollinaris (381 A.D.).
Apollinaris was the bishop of Laodicea in Syria (different from the church by the same name mentioned in the book of Revelation). In an effort to uphold the deity of Christ, Apollinaris taught that within the man Jesus dwelled the divine Logos. He believed that all men consisted of body, soul, and spirit. However, in defining the person of Christ, Appolinaris stated that the divine Logos took the part of the human spirit within the person of Jesus. Thus, his view was that, while Jesus was fully God, He was not fully man. A council was convened at Constantinople in A.D. 381 to deal with this issue. This council affirmed the humanity of Christ, seeing Him as both fully man and fully God.

Nestorius (431 A.D.).
Nestorius was the bishop of Constantinople. While admitting to both the humanity and the deity of Christ, he felt that it was inappropriate to refer to Mary as the Theotokos (“God-bearer”). Instead, he suggested that she be called Christotokos (“Christ-bearer”). Rather than this being an issue over the status of Mary, the question was really over the identity of Jesus. Nestorius held that the second member of the Godhead was really two persons—one the divine Logos and the other the human Christ.

Nestorius was opposed by Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. Cyril argued that, if you only refer to Mary as the Christ-bearer while excluding any reference to her as the God-bearer, then you are saying that the One whom she bore was not really God, but that He was only a part of God.

Thus, Cyril contended for the unity of the person of Christ. The council of Ephesus ultimately determined in A.D. 431 that there had been in Christ a union of two natures.

Eutyches.
Eutyches was the head of the monastery in Constantinople. Reacting to the ideas of Nestorius, Eutyches stated that Christ was originally made up of two natures, but that these two natures came together in the incarnation to become a single nature. This view was known as monophysitism (from the Greek monos (monoV), “one” and physis (fusiV), “nature.” A council was held at Chalcedon in A.D. 451 to decide the issue. It faced two extremist views. The Alexandrian School: They tended to be Monophystic, holding to the unity of Christ to the exclusion of His two natures. In answer to this position, the Creed of Chalcedon described the one person of the Son who took into union with His pre-existing divine nature a human nature. The Antioch School: They tended to make too much of a distinction between the human and divine natures of Christ. In response to this position, the Creed of Chalcedon described Jesus as “one and the same son, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, and one and the same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, whose natures are without division in the church.” In this way, the creed drew a line of demarcation between a “person” as a self-conscious entity versus a “nature” as a series of attributes. This description of Christ as “one person with two natures” is still used today to explain the incarnation.