How can Christ raise the dead yet die Himself? How can He heal the sick and cast out demons yet weeps and sleeps? Who is He? God or man or both? And if both, how? Today's video discusses what the Coptic Orthodox Church believes in terms of Christology and how are these two natures found in the one person of Jesus Christ. This issue has been the center of controversy for centuries and hopefully this video can help shed some light on the matter.
Welcome to answers from an apostolic faith.
In name of Father and Son, the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.
The Coptic Orthodox Church believes in the one person of Christ who is of two natures. This term in Greek is μια φύσεις (mia fýseis). Note that the Coptic Orthodox Church is not monophysite, meaning believing in one nature alone. One nature alone implies that the words divinity undermines the integrity of His humanity and this we totally reject. Mia in mia fýseis, on the other hand, is a Greek adjective meaning one. However, unlike móno, which means one alone, mia is used in the Alexandrian Christology to mean one nature that is composite of Christ's divinity and Christ's humanity.
So the Church believes in the one incarnate nature of the divine Logos. The one here in Greek is mia, not móno, so one incarnate nature of the divine Logos. The words incarnate nature demonstrate Christ's humanity and the words divine Logos demonstrate His divinity. So we believe in one nature composite of His divinity and His humanity. We believe that Christ's divinity united in a hypostatic union with Christ's humanity and this happened without a change to either His divinity or humanity. In fact, in our liturgical worship, the last prayer the priest confesses addresses the following to God the Father:
''Amen. Amen. Amen. I believe, I believe, I believe, and confess to the last breath... [demonstrating the importance of what is about to come] that this is the lifegiving Flesh that Your only-begotten Son, our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ, took from our Lady, the Lady of us all, the holy Theotokos, Saint Mary. He made it one with His divinity without mingling, without confusion, and without alteration.'' (Liturgy of St. Basil the Great)
Now, unfortunately, there are still some people today that suppose that the Coptic Orthodox Church believes that Christ's divinity swallowed His humanity, like the heretic critics believed. That is not what the Church believes at all. In fact, the Church has condemned the teachings of Eutychus along with those of Nestorius and Apollinaris. The Coptic Orthodox Church is miaphysite, not monophysite.
The Church prefers the term one incarnate nature of the divine Logos, which is often attributed to St. Cyril of Alexandria, because this is truly how Christ revealed Himself to us. For example, if you look at Christ walking on water, can you say that He is walking in His divinity? No, not really, because the divinity does not have legs to walk. Can you say that He is walking in His humanity? No, you can't either, because humans can't walk on water. The only option is to say that the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, is walking on water. It is the Logos acting in the flesh that walks on the water.
To demonstrate this, St. Cyril uses a few analogies that I will share with you. First, in the Scholia of the Only-Begotten Son, section 9, he resembles Christ to a lit coal. The coal itself represents the humanity of Christ while the fire symbolizes the divinity. Now, can you separate the fire from the coal? No! If I touch any part of the coal, I will get burnt. That is now the nature of the coal after it has been lit. It is the same with Christ.
Another analogy St. Cyril uses in his Scholia, section 10, is the example of the lily that produces a beautiful perfume. In our perception, this perfume is incorporeal, meaning it doesn't have a physical body. Yet the lily itself has a physical body. So St. Cyril correctly articulates that this perfume cannot exist without the flower itself. When we smell a lily, its perfume comes from the lily itself. So there's only one lily and this lily has a corporeal body yet it also has an incorporeal perfume and one cannot exist without the other. No lily, no perfume... no perfume, no lily. Of course, the physical lily here represents Christ's humanity, while the incorporeal perfume, His divinity.
I would say that the most important example, in my opinion, which St. Cyril gives, is the comparison between the union of a man's soul and body with the union of Christ's divinity and humanity. He says:
''I should say (although the description altogether falls short of the truth) that it is fitting to understand the union of Emmanuel to be such as the soul of a man might be thought to have with its own body. For the soul appropriates the things of the body even though in its proper nature it is apart from the body's natural passions. For the body is moved to physical desires, and the soul which is within it feels these things too, because of the union, but in no way does it participate in these things, except in so far as it takes the fulfilment of desire as its own gratification.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia on the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten, section 8)
In other words, he's saying that the body has physical desires: the body is hungry, thirsty, tired... Yet when these experiences take place, the soul also feels them, since the soul appropriates the things of the body, to use his own words. The soul feels the hunger or the thirst, although it is the body that needs food and drink. This example is particularly important because he builds on it the understanding of Christ's suffering. He says:
''If the body was struck by a sword, or tortured on an iron grid, then the soul would share in its grief, because it is its own body which is suffering. But in its own nature the soul does not suffer anything of these things. This indeed is how we attribute the union to Emmanuel... For the Godhead is impassible and is not in our condition. Yet [the Word] was united to the flesh endowed with a rational soul, and when the flesh suffered, even though he was impassible, he was aware of what was happening within it, and thus as God, even though he did away with the weakness of the flesh, still he appropriated those weaknesses of his own body. This is how he is said to have hungered, and to have been tired, and to have suffered for our sake.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia on the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten, section 8)
Now, so God, who is naturally impassible or incapable of suffering, took on flesh and He appropriated to Himself the characteristics of this flesh and He suffered in it. That is why St. Peter would say: Christ suffered for us in the flesh. And St. Paul would say:
'' 9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.'' (Hebrews 2:9)
So Jesus suffered and tasted death, although being incapable of suffering in His divinity, through His incarnation, He suffered in the flesh. Note that we cannot say that Christ's humanity suffered. Humanity on its own is a lifeless nature. In other words, it is a thing and a thing cannot suffer; only a person can. We must therefore say that the Son of God suffered in the flesh. Again, so how did the impassible God suffer? The impassible Son of God suffered in the flesh. Therefore, it is crucial never to separate Christ's two natures as He is ultimately one person. And that is why the Coptic Orthodox Church prefers the term mia fýseis.
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