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Psalm 23

 

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.  He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever. (ESV)

 

 

Jesus Cut In Two

Tuesday of Pentecost 7

9 July 2013

As a child I was fascinated by the magician's illusion of sawing a young woman in half. The woman appeared to be cut into two parts but would inevitably reappear on stage whole and un-bifurcated, no matter how much I imagined that she would drop out of the magician's box horribly sawn in two. A person who is divided in this way is truly a horror. If the magician had slipped with his saw and really cut asunder his lovely assistant she would be dead. No person survives such a division. The basic unity of the human person; physical, spiritual, and mental, is a constant human presumption. And rightly. This is what is so odd about the view of Nestorius of Antioch that Jesus was really two almost unrelated personalities glued together. For Nestorius, Jesus is like the magician's subject who comes out of the box in two parts; a horribly mangled person, really two persons.

 

Cyril of Alexandria quite clearly advocated for the unity of person in Christ. There is a real, not imaginary or feigned, unity between the two natures in Christ. He who is the Word of God from God is also truly man of the virgin Mary. He is God's Son and Mary's son, but not in such a way that His divine nature is given a beginning by His human generation of Mary. Who is this that received His flesh of Mary? None other than God's Son. To say otherwise is to try to divide the human nature of Christ from the divine nature of Christ. It is to attempt the magician's trick upon the incarnation. Two Christs would horribly mangle the incarnation.

 

Yet today there are many Western theologians who want to talk about the human Jesus as distinguished from the divine Christ, as though such a division would be possible without the complete devastation of the Christian gospel. Ironically, Islamic critics of Christian theology often adopt language very much like Western liberal theologians and Nestorius of old when speaking of Jesus. This may give us some clue as to why liberal Christians will show more tolerance for Islamic theology than for faithful Christian confession. They both would prefer to conclude that Jesus was a human philosopher and moralist, in the case of Islam, inferior to Mohammed and, in the case of liberal Christianity, inferior to the liberal theologians themselves. A Jesus sawn in two; sundering His two natures is a horror because a Jesus who is not fully divine cannot cleanse a nature which has no relationship with the divine. This separation results in a Jesus who has the same problems we do, and cannot save anyone, not even Himself. A Jesus cut in two will never cut it.

 

Cyril of Alexandria

 

"The nature of man has fallen into the disease of disobedience in Adam. Now it has been accepted in Christ through His complete obedience. For it is written, 'For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous' (Rm 5:19). For in Adam human nature was subjected to the curse: 'you are dust, and to dust you shall return' (Gn 3:19).  In Christ it gained the riches of being able to trample underfoot the bonds of death and to triumph over decay, saying that prophecy, 'O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?' (1Co 15:55). Human nature became accursed, but in Christ even this was brought to nothing. It has been said to the holy Virgin, Elizabeth prophesying in spirit, 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb' (Lk 1:42)! Sin reigned over us and the inventor and father of sins behaved proudly over all who are under heaven, while accusing them of the transgression of the divine laws. But in Christ we see the nature of man, as a second firstfruits of our race, having trust in God. For He said clearly, 'The ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me' (Jn 14:30).

 

"If the Only-begotten had not become as we are and had not become as we are by means of birth in the flesh from a woman, we would not have been enriched with what is His. For as the most wise Paul writes to us, the second Adam appeared to us, not from the earth like the first, but from heaven (1Co 15:47).

 

"For the Word that is from above and from the Father has come down not into the flesh of anyone nor into alien flesh, nor again has He descended upon anyone of those like us to dwell in him, as He was in the Prophets. However, having made His own the body which was from a woman and born from her after the flesh, He gathered up man's birth through Himself, and was made as we after the flesh, although He is before all ages from the Father. This confession of faith the divine Scriptures delivered to us.

 

"You act as though you are afraid that the Word begotten of God had the beginning of His Being from earthly flesh. You completely take away the mystery of the economy with flesh, saying that the holy Virgin ought not to be called by us Mother of God. You act as though those who call her Mother of God are turned to an inevitable and necessary confession, that the Word from God became fruit of flesh. But it is not so, far from it. For He who has His Being of God the Father before all time (for He is the framer of the ages), in the last times of the age, since He became Flesh, is said to have been born after the flesh. For if the body is conceived of as His own, how will He not wholly and entirely appropriate the birth of His own body? Yes, you too would have approved the right and undefiled faith of those who so believe, if you would have persuaded yourself to reason and to confess that Christ is truly God, the One and only of God the Father, not divided into man separately and likewise into God, but the same, both Word from God the Father and man from woman as we are, while He remains God."

Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes, 1.1   
 
Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, watch over us as Your blood-bought sheep. Help us to confess You as God and man in one person. Amen.

 

For Krista Hunt, that the Lord would be with her as she undergoes therapy for cancer

 

For Brad Deluca, that he would regain his strength

  

For the convention of the LCMS, that it would be focused on what God has done for us in Christ, rather than on our efforts or powers of organization

Art: D�rer, Albrecht  The Adoration of the Trinity (1515) 

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