Apollinarianism

846 Words4 Pages
Jesus Christ is God in the flesh; a human to walk amongst men. Not only was Jesus fully God, but also fully human. “He is the person who gives Christian faith shape and identity. Jesus has shown us who is he by coming, in the flesh, as one of us” (Jones, 117). Sometimes it’s hard for us to grasp the concept that Jesus is fully human, and fully God. How can a person be all of one thing, as well as all of something else? There are so many differences between God and humans, how can Jesus fit into both of these categories fully? Divinity is eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, holy and immutable. Humanity is temporal, finite, sinful and changeable. The rift between these two categories is caused by sin. The fact that Jesus acts as a connection…show more content…
These Christological Heresies take different approaches at explaining the connections between God, Jesus and Humanity. Apollinarianism suggests that Jesus was not fully human but rather that he possessed the divine Word instead of a human spirit; a human body with a divine mind. “Apollinaris saw that humans were tricky, fickle things, often irrational and unreliable, and he could not imagine God sharing in that situation” (127). Apollinaris taught that the two natures of Christ could not coexist within one person and because of this, his solution was to decrease the human nature of Christ. Although he does have good points, his views don’t explain the way that Jesus came to earth and saved us from our sin. Jesus needed to be God to offer a pure and holy sacrifice and He needed to be a man in order to die for…show more content…
Nestorianism emphasizes the two detached natures of Jesus, and keeps them separate. “[The] separation between Jesus’s divine and human natures was meant to protect a certain idea of sovereignty of God” (129). This heresy recognized God and Humanity as two separate factors in Jesus’s persona in order to logically connect deity with us on earth. When Jesus saves people and overcomes death that is of God and his human tendencies (emotions, pain, and death) are that of human nature. Even though this heresy is actually the most “subtle and pernicious of the Christological heresies” many people argued that this outlook stated that there were two Jesus’s instead of one (129). Another problem with Nestorianism is that it jeopardizes the whole idea of atonement. If Jesus is two persons, then which one died on the cross? If it was the "human person," then the atonement is not of divine quality and therefore this isn’t enough to take away our sins. If it was the “divine person” then he couldn’t possibly
Show More
Related

  • Council Of Nicaaeus

    491 Words  | 2 Pages

    The heretical teachings of Arius, concerning the deity of Jesus, caused an uproar in the Eastern and Western Church. Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, took from the beliefs of Origen and implemented it with “radical monotheism” (Lane 28). He believed the Father was God, not including the other two natures. To him the Son was a vessel used to create the universe through the Father. Therefore the Son wasn’t of the father, but a “creature made out of nothing” (Lane 28). These false principles were

    Read More

More about Apollinarianism

Open Document