The Nature and Role of Jesus

Overview

Recall questions on Arius and Athanasius, Nicaea and the Chalcedonian definition, Luther on justification and the theology of the cross, Calvin on Christ's threefold office, and Moltmann and Weinandy on whether God suffers.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Outline what Arius taught about the Son.

   Model answer

   Arius held that the Son is not eternal but the first and greatest of God's creatures, brought into being before time and used as the agent through whom everything else was made. His slogan was that there was a point at which the Son was not. He argued this to protect God's uniqueness: only the Father is unbegotten, unchangeable and without origin, and to say the Son shares that would either divide God or make two gods.

2. 2

   Why did Arius think a fully divine Son was impossible?

   Model answer

   Because of what the gospels report about Jesus. Jesus grows, learns, is ignorant of the day of judgment, prays to the Father, suffers and dies. Arius held that God by definition cannot change or suffer, so a being who does these things cannot be God in the full sense. He also thought the language of begetting and of the Father being greater implied that the Son derives from and is subordinate to the Father.

3. 3

   How did Athanasius answer Arius?

   Model answer

   He argued that the Son is of the same being as the Father, eternally begotten and not made, sharing the one divine nature rather than being the most exalted creature. Begetting for Athanasius indicates relation, not a moment of origin; there was never a Father without a Son. He also pressed the practical point that Christians pray to and worship Christ, which would be idolatry if Christ were a creature.

4. 4

   Explain the argument from salvation that Athanasius used.

   Model answer

   Only God can save, and only what God has taken hold of is healed. Athanasius argued that if the Son is a creature, then a creature is trying to repair the breach between God and humanity, and no creature can restore incorruption or bring people into God's own life. His conclusion was that God took on human nature so that human beings might share in the life of God, a transformation the Greek tradition calls deification.

5. 5

   What was settled at Nicaea, and what was left unresolved?

   Model answer

   Nicaea in 325 rejected the view that the Son was created and confessed him as of one being with the Father, using a term that had no biblical warrant and that many bishops initially disliked. It did not end the argument: decades of controversy followed, with parties preferring a term meaning of similar being, and imperial policy swinging back and forth before the Nicene position finally prevailed later in the century.

6. 6

   Explain what the Chalcedonian definition asserts.

   Model answer

   That Jesus Christ is one person in two natures, fully God and fully human, the two natures united without confusion, change, division or separation, each keeping its own properties. The humanity is complete, including a human mind and will, and the divinity is undiminished. It functions as a fence rather than an explanation: it marks out where thinking about Christ goes wrong without claiming to say how the union works.

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