What are we as human beings? Are we simply a body and a soul, as most have thought in Christian theology? Or are we something different, more or less? In Part 1, we started to answer the question by looking to the man Jesus Christ. In two theses for what I am calling a “Chalcedonian anthropology,” we thought through the biblical logic of how the incarnation makes the gospel “work,” which gave us good biblical warrant to define human being in Christ.
In this Part 2, we’ll continue looking to Christ until we have a clear understanding of our own human being. If Christ is the paradigm for all things truly human, including what makes us human, then we need to know what makes him fully human. Fortunately for us, the early church already answered that question. The Chalcedonian Definition tells us both that and how the divine Son’s incarnation made him a complete man, like us in every way, but without sin. So in this article, we’ll walk through the last three theses of a Chalcedonian anthropology. We’ll consider the early church’s pattern for answering the what question of Christ as the God-man and apply it to answer the what question of mere man. Following the dogmatic logic in moving from God the Son to God the Son incarnate will give us solid historical warrant for extending that logic from Christ the man to all mankind.
In the end, this will give us an anthropology “from above.” Allowing the humanity of Christ to govern our understanding of our own humanity will give us a greater appreciation for the depth of human dignity and the wisdom of God in the incarnation of the Son. It will fortify a critical link in our systematic theology. And it will equip us to confront the man-centered issues of our day in a Christ-centered way.
Let’s begin with the third thesis of a Chalcedonian anthropology.
3. Chalcedon confesses that Christ is fully man in the same basic way he is fully God.
In the fifth century, the church needed a coherent way to confess that Christ is both fully God and fully man. Scripture requires this unity and distinction. But leading up to Chalcedon, the major attempts to make sense of the divine Son’s incarnation were insufficient. Nestorius and Cyril of Alexandria both affirmed that the divine Son was made like us, not by replacing the human soul, but by becoming a complete man.[1] Yet neither of them could account well for both a real distinction between the deity and humanity of Christ and their unity in only one Son.
1. The church rejected the fourth-century heresy of Apollinaris, who argued that in the incarnation, the person of the Son replaced and functioned as the human soul of Christ, which would result in an incomplete man and savior.
So at Chalcedon (451 AD), rather than trying to modify or merge different explanations for how the divine Son became a man, the church looked to its earlier confession that the divine Son is God prior to his incarnation. Thus, to understand how Chalcedon defines Christ as fully God and fully man, we first need to look briefly at Trinitarian orthodoxy.
Fair warning: things are going to get a bit deep and technical. But the terms and concepts ahead are the best way to understand and confess what Scripture requires. And heads-up that “person” doesn’t mean what might think. Hang in there … it’s worth it.
Person-Nature Being of God as Trinity
In the Trinitarian debates of the fourth century, the church needed a coherent way to confess the mystery of the Trinity. Most agreed that there is one God and there are three who are God, namely, the Father, Son, and Spirit. The disagreement centered on how to make at least basic sense of that truth. Because Scripture clearly reveals that it’s true, there must be a reasonable explanation of how God is both one and three.
So the church needed an ontological solution to accomplish its dogmatic task of defending and proclaiming the Trinity. Unfortunately, the theologians of the day used different terms and concepts, and sometimes they used the same ones differently. As if things weren’t complicated enough!
The breakthrough finally came with the development of the person-nature distinction. Beginning with the Creed of Nicaea (325 AD), the church repurposed ordinary terms and concepts to do the theological work required to confess that God is three persons (hypostases) in one nature (ousia). That is, the Father, Son, and Spirit are each a distinct divine person that subsists in the single-same divine nature.[2] More specifically, each is a subject/self/“I” who is fully and equally God precisely because each person subsists fully and equally in the divine nature.
2. To subsist means for something to exist by itself. As used here, the divine persons exist without ontological dependence upon the divine nature, yet the persons are not ontologically separate from the divine nature.
The divine persons are not the same thing as the divine nature, they’re not parts of the divine nature, and they’re not separate from the divine nature. Those would lead to the heresy of modalism (not three distinct persons) or tri-theism (three separate gods). Rather, hypostasis (person) and ousia (nature) are intimately related in the Trinity, but they are distinct ontological realities: person is a subsistence that provides existence to a nature; nature is a substance that exists in a person. Yet this person-nature distinction does not divide God into three divine beings because the persons equally and fully share the same nature and perfectly indwell one another (coinherence). Gods’ nature is singular and simple in that it cannot be parted or partitioned.
Simply put, person and nature are distinct from one another, but both are necessary elements. God is a person-nature being.
Thus, by the end of the fourth century, the church had made ontological sense of the Trinity through the person-nature distinction. The full Nicene Creed of 381 AD confesses that there is only one God (according to nature), and there are always three who are God (according to person). The Father, Son, and Spirit are who God is according to person (hypostasis); one divine being is what they are according to nature (ousia)
Person-Nature Being of God the Son Incarnate
At Chalcedon, then, it was this particular distinction between person and nature that the church used to confess that the divine Son, the second hypostasis of the Trinity, became a man, our Lord Jesus Christ. The Definition says:
We . . . 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 . . . to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of the natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person . . .
Thus, the center of God’s grace to the church at Chalcedon is the person-nature analogy that confesses how the divine Son’s incarnation made him a real and complete human being! On the divine side, Christ is fully God because the divine person (hypostasis) of the Son subsists in the divine nature (ousia). That’s how the eternal Son is “consubstantial” (homoousios) with the Father (and the Spirit). On the human side of the analogy, Christ is fully man because the same divine person (hypostasis) of the Son now also subsists in a complete human nature (ousia), which is a “rational soul and body.” That’s how the incarnate Son is “consubstantial” (homoousios) with us. That’s how the Word, the eternal Son, became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1, 14).
At this point, it’s crucial that we slow down and identify a lynchpin of orthodox Christology: the divine person of the Son is the person of Christ.
Just after Chalcedon, some erroneously interpreted the one “person” in the Definition to be the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, the Son’s incarnation resulted in the unique divine-human “person” (a kind of composite) who is the whole “person” of Christ. That’s similar to what we mean today by saying a particular, whole individual is a “person”—body, soul, mind, emotions, etc. But if applied to Christ, that would lead us into the heresy of Nestorianism that argued that Christ had two persons, one divine and one human.
In contrast, it’s crucial to note that the church insisted that “person” must have the same meaning as in the Trinity! The incarnation did not create a distinct human “person” or a composite “person.” Rather, the one and only “person” of Christ is none other than the divine hypostasis of the Son. We confess that Christ is both fully God and fully man because his divine and human natures are located specifically in the eternal person (hypostasis) of the divine Son.
So Chalcedon teaches that we must see Jesus Christ as a person-nature being to make sense of the fact that he is God the Son incarnate. The Chalcedonian analogy presents a person in a nature on the divine side and then the same person in a different nature on the human side. Christ is both fully God and fully man because the same divine person of the Son who subsists eternally in the divine nature has come to subsist forever in a human nature.
This repetition of a person-nature constitution in Christ does not create two persons or beings because the divine and human natures concur in “one person”/subsistence/hypostasis. As with the Trinity, hypostasis and ousia are intimately related in Christ, yet they remain distinct ontological realities: person is still a subsistence; nature is still a substance. But the reduplication does mean that Christ has two distinct person-nature ontologies, one fully divine and the other fully human.
Of course, extending the person-nature distinction from the Trinity to Christ required some adjustment. The same divine person (the Son) is the pivot point of the Chalcedonian analogy: he is God according to his divine nature and now man according to his human nature. But these two natures are each complete and distinct from the other, and each nature retains its original integrity. As the Definition says, the incarnation did not change or confuse the natures, “the property of each nature being preserved,” even as they now exist together in the divine person of the Son. So the natures are the same in that each is an ousia. Yet they’re different in that one is completely divine and the other is completely human. In this way, the extension is analogical.
Even with that adjustment, however, the Chalcedonian analogy holds. The divine Son is fully man in the same basic way that he is fully God: through a person-nature constitution.
Moreover, the divine Son acts as a man in the same basic way that he acts as God. The Chalcedonian tradition clarified that persons act, not natures. So in the Trinity, the divine nature itself does not act. Rather, as persons of the Trinity, the Father acts as the Father, the Son acts as the Son, and the Spirit acts as the Spirit, all through the one divine nature. Likewise, the human nature assumed in the Son’s incarnation does not act. Rather, the person of the Son acts through his own body and soul. And because the divine Son acts freely and directly through his human nature as fully man, the result is genuinely human obedience to the Father. Anything less would mean that nothing Christ did in his life, death, and resurrection could count for us or redeem us.
Thus, as with the Trinity, person and nature are distinct from one another, but both are necessary elements in Christology. Christ is a person-nature being, both as God and as man.
By the end of the seventh century, the church had made ontological sense of the Son’s incarnation through the person-nature distinction. The Chalcedonian Definition and the Christology that developed around it (including a few more church councils) clarified and defended the logic and glory of Christ as God the Son incarnate: the second person of the Trinity added to himself a human nature alongside the divine nature that he shares with the Father and the Spirit. The divine Son, then, is who Christ is according to person (hypostasis); fully divine and fully human are what he is according to nature (ousia).
At this point, I think it’s important to acknowledge that thinking carefully about the Trinity and then the incarnation of the divine Son is not easy. But the terms and concepts that make it difficult are the very ones that the Spirit has led the church to use for a right understanding of our triune Creator and our divine-human Savior. So if you need it, take a moment to review what we just discussed before reading further about how we should apply those terms and concepts to human beings.
4. The man Jesus Christ is the divine person of the Son in a human nature (body and soul).
By looking carefully at the Chalcedonian Definition and moving from the divine side of the analogy to the human side, we can observe three propositions that define the fully human being of Christ.
First, the divine person of the Son is the ontological subject of the man Jesus Christ. The incarnation did not create a person, human or composite, alongside the divine person of the Son. Rather, the incarnation was an act of the divine person of the Son assuming a human nature (body and soul) without a human person. Mary did not provide a whole human being in the birth of Christ. Rather, the divine person of the Son came to the human nature that God created in Mary’s womb. The person of the divine Son is not lost in his own incarnation, and he does not hover above or around the human nature he assumed. Rather, as a personal hypostasis and distinct ontological reality, the Son is the subject/self/who/“I” of his human nature.
Thus, it’s crucial we understand that the divine person of the Son is integral to his constitution as a fully human being.
Second, this same divine person of the Son subsists in a created body-soul nature as the man Jesus Christ. The incarnation did not make the divine Son the soul of a human body. Rather, the divine person of the Son assumed a complete human nature to become a fully human being and our wholly sufficient Redeemer. The body and soul assumed in the incarnation do not provide a human puppet for the Son to manipulate. Rather, the divine person of the Son subsists in them fully, completely, and permanently to possess them as his own body and his own soul. As with the divine nature, all that is true of his body and soul is attributed to the divine person of the Son as a man. So the fully human being of Christ is constituted by the personal hypostasis of the Son subsisting in the body-soul nature he created and assumed.
Third, the divine person of the Son is the acting subject of his human nature. The incarnation did not provide a body and soul for the Son to use merely as his external instruments. Rather, the divine person of the Son acts through his body and soul as their intimate and ultimate “I,” the who of his human nature. The incarnation did not enable divine acts to be consistent with or considered as human acts. Rather, all that the divine Son does through his human nature results in real human acts in genuine human obedience to God. Just as he acts as God by directing the divine nature, the divine person of the Son acts as a man by directing his human nature.
5. Mere man is a human person in a human nature (body and soul).
The Chalcedonian analogy invites us to extend Christology into anthropology. The early church defined the human being of Christ by (1) retrieving the eternal Son’s person-nature constitution as God, and (2) extending it to the incarnate Son’s constitution as a complete man. And because Christ is the man, the church should (but rarely does!) (1) retrieve the incarnate Son’s person-nature constitution, and (2) extend it to define the human being of mere man.
Such an extension gives us three corresponding propositions that define our human being in terms of his. Some adjustments are needed in a few places. But the same basic definition of human being holds.
First, a created human person is the ontological subject of a merely human being. What makes the Son fully human is not the absence or dislocation of the divine person but the addition of a human nature to the divine person. Thus, because the divine hypostasis of the Son is integral to his constitution as a human being, a corresponding human hypostasis is necessary to our human being. Remember, nature (substance) does not exist outside a person (subsistence). So in the incarnation of the man, the divine person of the Son supplied the required in-person (enhypostatic) existence of his human nature. Likewise, in the creation of mere man, a human person provides the in-person (enhypostatic) existence for our human nature.
Of course, we need to recognize differences between a person that is divine and one that is human. A divine person is uncreated, eternally subsists as God in mutual coinherence with the other divine persons, and is capable of an ontological relationship with both the divine nature and a human nature. A human person is created, subsists by God’s grace and power in an external relationship with other persons (divine and human), and is capable of an ontological relationship with only a human nature.
Yet the person in Christology and the person in anthropology remain fundamentally analogous. Recall that the natures in Christ are different in that one is completely divine and the other is completely human, yet they are the same in that each is an ousia. Similarly, the person of the man is completely divine and the person of mere man is completely human, yet each is still a hypostasis.
Second, a human person subsists in a created body-soul nature as a merely human being. The divine person of the Son is a complete man through his subsistence in a human nature. Whereas the person was the pivot point in the Chalcedonian analogy, its extension pivots around the human nature that the man shares with mere man. Thus, Christ is homo-ousios with us because we each have the same nature (i.e. human); he is homoi-hypostasis with us because each of us is a similar person (divine vs. human) subsisting in our own body-soul nature.
Rather than needing ontological adjustment, the person-nature analogy actually strengthens at this point. It’s true that divine simplicity (i.e. God cannot be divided) requires that we recognize a modal subsistence of the divine persons in the divine nature. That is, the persons are truly distinct yet not separate things from the nature. But the Creator-creature distinction requires a real subsistence of the incarnate person of the Son in his human nature because he has a separate (but not separated) existence from the body and soul he assumed. Likewise, to account for (among other things) the separation of the body at death, a human person has the same real subsistence in its human nature.
Simply put, the divine person of Christ and the human person are similar in that each is a hypostasis, but each person has the same relationship to its human nature.
Third, a created human person is the acting subject of a human nature in a merely human being. Even accounting for the Creator-creature distinction and the real subsistence of the divine person of the Son in his human nature, that same person is still the willing subject (who) of his human faculties and capacities (what). By extension, each human person is the willing subject (who) of its own human nature (what).
Beyond accounting for the sinlessness of Christ, the person-nature analogy is so close at this point that it requires no significant adjustment. Even though it is a divine person who wills, the result is a genuinely human act because it is a free and direct act of the Son through the same human nature as the rest of humanity, without mediation or mastery by the divine nature or will. Likewise, a human person acts as a human being by working directly and without divine coercion through its own body and soul.
In short, then, what makes us human beings corresponds directly to what makes the incarnate Son a fully human being. Each of us is, first and foremost, a personal hypostasis that provides the required ontological who/self/“I” of a particular body and soul. Each of us subsists in our body-soul nature so completely that it’s our body and our soul. And each of us acts not on but through our human nature. Of course, we must account for the very real limitations of being a created person and the corruption of our human natures by sin. But with that, we are still person-nature beings.
Conclusion
We can now return to the what question of human being with a Christ-centered answer. According to a Chalcedonian anthropology, what we are actually begins with a who. Allowing the man Jesus Christ to define us reveals that we are more than a body and a soul. Regardless of how those terms are used in the current debate, they can only account for the human nature that the Son assumed to become a fully human being. We’re not soul/mind-body beings. Rather, we’re person-nature beings. Like Christ the man, each of us is a distinct person (who) that fully possesses our own body and soul (what). Each of us corresponds to Christ, first as human person to divine person (analogically but truly), then as human nature to human nature (exactly, except sin).
And this means that the common way of thinking about humans as merely a body and a soul is insufficient. Most people would say a “person” is a particular body with a soul, or sometimes just the soul that’s in the body. But there are two problems with this thinking. It creates confusion in Christology by changing the meaning of “person” and missing or mislocating the divine person of the Son. Even worse, saying that a particular body and soul constitutes a human person threatens to reintroduce heresy in Christology. Simply put, it becomes difficult to avoid the heretical implication that the Son’s assumption of a body and soul actually created a human person, which would make Christ a mere man, not the God-man. As the early church recognized, the result would be disastrous because a mere man cannot redeem sinful man.
Moreover, our design as person-nature beings like Christ is not just interesting to consider, it’s central to God’s purposes in creation and the display of his glory.
Being a human who in a body-soul what raises our value and dignity to correspond with the divine person of the Son. This does not mean that our bodies and souls are bad or irrelevant. Our human nature (body and soul) is good because God created it as good. And our personal subsistence in a body-soul nature makes that body and soul our body and soul, which completes the divine design for human beings. Even after the fall, our human nature was elevated by the divine Son assuming a body and soul just like ours, yet without sin. Still, each human person (defined in the Christological sense) has a special dignity as an ontological “I” and acting subject of a nature. That glory and honor is grounded in the Trinity, revealed in Christ, and extended to us by God’s grace.
Thus, a human who in a body-soul what bears the image of God on the earth and the crown of glory and honor among his creatures. As Genesis 1:26 tells us, the imago Dei sets humanity apart from the rest of creation. That image has many aspects, including the ability to reason, have relationships, and have dominion over the rest of creation. But all of that is grounded in what we can call the “ontological imago Dei” that was revealed when the image of God came to the earth. That is, each human being is a person-nature icon of God himself that proclaims his dominion over all creation. Every human being is made in the person-nature image of God, which, again, is grounded in the Trinity, revealed in Christ, and extended to us by God’s grace.
A human who in a body-soul what bears special witness to the glory and coherence of redemption in Christ. Near the beginning of the previous essay, I raised the question of what made it possible for Jesus Christ to atone for our sins. We can now answer that it was a person-nature constitution that corresponds with ours. We know that Christ bore our sins in his body on the cross. But we also know that persons act, not natures. So it’s not a human nature but a human person who bears guilt and deserves punishment for sins committed through a body and a soul. Thus, on the cross, it was not his human nature, but the divine person of the Son who bore the guilt of human persons. Simply put, the presence of a human who strengthens the biblical logic of penal substitutionary atonement that magnifies the glorious grace of our Lord.
And a human who in a body-soul what can help provide answers to many of the anthropological issues that we face today. Being made in the person-nature image of God grounds the unique dignity of all human beings, which has wide-ranging implications. For example, the existence of a human who as a necessary and primary aspect of human being moves the abortion debate from signs of life (e.g. a heartbeat) to the presence of life prior to any biological development of the human what. The human person’s correspondence with the eternal person of the Son maintains the value of every human being near the end of life on this earth, regardless of their quality of life or how “useful” society thinks they are. And thinking of a more recent issue like artificial intelligence, a human “I” that is the acting subject of a body and soul provides a clear ontological line that protects real human beings from devaluation by our own inventions.
The purpose of the first article and this one has been to help us define human being in Christ. Based on what we have covered, I think a Chalcedonian anthropology is a good start. Of course, there’s much more to say, clarify, develop, defend, and even correct where needed. But my hope is that this start encourages the church to take up the needful and hopeful task of defining mere man by looking to the man. May the Lord be glorified in it as he reigns over all things as the God-man.
