The Chalcedonian Definition of 451 has been the touchstone of orthodox Christology for the past millennium and a half. In this definition was found the resolution to the complex Christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries. Here, Scripture’s teaching of the hypostatic union was codified for the church: the incarnate Christ is one divine person who subsists in two distinct yet united natures, divine and human. He is not two persons, as the Nestorians taught, but rather “one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son.” Nor does He subsist in only one nature, a divine-human hybrid, as the Monophysites taught, but rather is to be “acknowledged in two natures inconfusedly [and] unchangeably… the difference of the natures being in no way removed because of the union, but rather the properties of each nature being preserved.” One person, two natures. This is the doctrine of the hypostatic union, a cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith.

But as brilliant as the Chalcedonian definition was, it did not answer every question that was to arise in the succeeding decades. In the late sixth and early seventh centuries, a debate arose over whether Christ had one will or two. Sure, He had two natures, one divine and one human. But did that mean He had two wills, one divine and one human? Or, since He was one divine person, did He have just one divine will?

The Monothelite Controversy

This debate has been dubbed “the Monothelite controversy.” Those who taught that Christ had only one divine will were called Monothelites (monos, “one,” thelēma, “will”), and those who taught that He had two wills—one divine and one human—were called Dyothelites (duo, “two,” thelēma, “will”).

The disagreement basically boiled down to whether the faculty of will is a property of a person or a nature. If the faculty of will were a property of a person and not a nature, we would expect Christ, who is one person, to have only one will. But if the faculty of will were a property of a nature and not a person, we would expect Christ, who has two natures, to have two wills. So which is it? Does will belong with person or nature? Does the incarnate Christ have one will or two?

The debate was hashed out in earnest in the events leading up to the Third Council of Constantinople in 680 and 681, when 164 bishops convened to decide the matter. The Monothelite cause was taken up by Macarius I of Antioch, but the majority of the bishops agreed with the writings of Maximus the Confessor of Constantinople (ca. 580–662), a learned monk who argued vociferously for a Dyothelite Christology. The Sixth Ecumenical Council concluded that Christ had to have both a divine will and a human will. Monothelitism was condemned as a heresy leading to Monophysitism, Macarius was deposed, and Dyothelitism was codified as orthodox Christology.

Only a Human Will?

But what was the case against Monothelitism? Well, in the first place, if the incarnate Christ had only one will, which will did He have, and which did He lack? On the one hand, you could argue that part of becoming truly human required the Son to have a human will, and if He could only have one will, then it must have been the divine will that He lacked.

But this raises a number of problems. If Christ, being one person, has only one will, then will must be a property of person rather than nature. This would mean that, from eternity, the Son, being a divine person, had a divine will—up until the incarnation, that is. For when the Word became flesh and took on a human will, He would have had to shed the divine will that He possessed from all eternity. This would be to predicate genuine change in the Second Person of the Trinity, undermining divine immutability. He would have transmuted from (a) a divine person with a divine will to (b) a human person with a human will.

But of course Christ did not become a human person (anhypostasis), as even the Monothelites stipulated. He was a divine person who assumed a human nature into personal union with His divine nature. For this reason, it has not been argued that Christ’s one will was human.

Only a Divine Will?

Well, if the incarnate Christ had only one will, and it wasn’t a human will, it must have been a divine will. This is what the Monothelites argued. The eternal Son was a divine person, and thus had a divine will from all eternity. When He assumed a human nature in the incarnation, He remained a single divine person and thus retained a single divine will. But because (they argued) will is a property of person and not nature, the incarnate Christ did not have a human will.

But does the Bible support that claim? There are at least four reasons to answer in the negative. Monothelite Christology is fatal to Chalcedonian orthodoxy, fatal to the doctrine of the Trinity, fatal to the humanity of Christ, and fatal to the Gospel itself.

Fatal to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy

The first problem with Monothelitism is that it is fatal to Chalcedonian orthodoxy, which is a biblically faithful synthesis of scriptural teaching concerning the person of Christ.

Recall that the crux of this debate is whether the faculty of will is a property of person or nature. If will belongs to person, and Christ is one person, then Christ can have only one will. If will belongs to nature, and Christ has two natures, then Christ must have two wills. Interestingly, Chalcedon weighs in on this question, and in so doing it commends Dyothelitism.

The Definition says that Christ assumed a human nature in order to be “perfect in manhood,” “truly man,” and “consubstantial [i.e., of the same nature] with us according to the manhood.” Then, it defines the human nature Christ assumed by saying He was “of a rational soul and body.” According to Chalcedon, a human nature is a rational soul and body.

But it is virtually universally acknowledged that the will is a faculty of the human soul, alongside the intellect. A rational soul is equipped with (a) a mind that interprets and understands the world and (b) a will that makes choices informed by that understanding. This means that Christ’s human soul is that by which He thinks, understands, and makes choices. The faculty of the will is located in the rational soul, which Chalcedon says was part of that human nature that the Son assumed to be consubstantial with us.

In other words, Chalcedon locates the will in the soul, and it locates the soul in the nature, not the person.[1] Since will is a property of nature, and Christ subsists in two natures, Chalcedon constrains us to a Dyothelite Christology. In Chalcedonian terms, Monothelitism is inherently monophysitic, because one will implies one nature.[2]

Fatal to the Trinity

Second, Monothelitism is fatal to the doctrine of the Trinity. In the first place, it runs afoul of an essential maxim that was universally accepted in early orthodox Trinitarianism: the doctrine of inseparable operations.

Versions of the phrase opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt (“the external works of the Trinity are undivided/indivisible”), along with its Greek counterpart, appear throughout the writings of such pro-Nicene fathers as Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. It means that the acts of the Triune God cannot be divided up among the three persons, but that each divine person performs each divine act.[3] Just as God’s nature is indivisible, so also His acts are indivisible.

This reasoning assumes that a person’s nature is the principle by which he acts. Whatever works a person performs, he does so by virtue of the nature in which he subsists. So, Christ sleeps by virtue of His human nature (Matt 8:24; cf. Ps 121:4), but calms the storm by virtue of His divine nature (Matt 8:26; cf. Job 38:8). In other words, the doctrine of inseparable operations is rooted in the notion that a person’s acts—which would include acts of his will—are a function of his nature.

In this way, pro-Nicene trinitarianism locates the will in nature rather than person, consistent with Dyothelitism. But if, as the Monothelites contend, will were a property of person rather than nature, then the external acts of the Trinity could be divided among the three persons, conceived as three separate centers of consciousness with three separate wills. When worked out consistently, the metaphysics of Monothelitism undermines a fundamental staple of orthodox trinitarianism.

If Jesus cannot make the human choice to withstand temptation and choose obedience to His Father, He is not truly human.

Further, Monothelitism strikes at trinitarian unity in another way. In Matthew 26:39, Jesus famously prays that the cup of the Father’s wrath might pass from Him. “Yet,” He says, “not as I will, but as You will.” Though this statement is fraught with mystery, pro-Chalcedonian Christology teaches that this was an instance in which Jesus submitted His human will (which righteously recoiled from an uninhibited sprint into the wrath of God) to the divine will. According to His holy humanity, there is some righteous backwardness that the Son feels when contemplating the punishment of the cross. But such hesitation is quickly remedied by submitting His human will to the divine will (the will shared by Father, Son, and Spirit).

But according to Monothelitism, Jesus had no human will. He must therefore be speaking of subjecting His distinct divine will to the Father’s distinct divine will. Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that these are distinct faculties of willing (by treating will as a property of personhood), could it be even theoretically possible for there to be a distinction in what the divine Son wants and what the divine Father wants? How can it be possible for two divine persons to will contrary to one another? On a Monothelite reading of Matthew 26:39, it seems impossible to avoid positing a fatal disruption between the person of the Father and the person of the Son.

Fatal to the Humanity of Christ

A third problem with Monothelitism is that it is fatal to the genuine humanity of Christ. If Christ didn’t assume a human will in His incarnation, it seems difficult to argue convincingly that Christ was and is truly human. To put it simply, genuine humans make human choices by virtue of their human wills! To be bereft of a human faculty of willing is to be deprived of the capacity to make genuinely human choices. Without that capacity, it would seem that our Savior would be decidedly unlike us in a most significant way.

Specifically, the absence of a distinct human will seems clearly to run afoul of the notion that Jesus endured genuine temptation (e.g., Matt 4:1–11). James 1:13 teaches that God by definition cannot be tempted, and so Jesus could not have been tempted by virtue of anything of His divinity. At the same time, the nature of temptation is a proposal to the will that it should consent to sin. Jesus connects temptation to the will when He counsels His sleeping disciples to pray that they may not enter into temptation, for though their spirit is willing their flesh is weak (Matt 26:41). Temptation is a proposal to the will, and one succumbs to temptation by choosing sin rather than obedience.

Now, if Jesus could not be tempted by virtue of His deity (Jas 1:13), He could only be tempted by virtue of His humanity. But if temptation is a proposal to the will that it should choose sin, then Jesus must have had a human will to which temptation proposed sin. Only in this way could He be our sympathetic high priest “who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).[4]

If Jesus cannot make the human choice to withstand temptation and choose obedience to His Father, He is not truly human. And since temptation is a proposal to the will to choose disobedience, He had to have had a human will. The alternative is fatal to His genuine humanity. To be truly human, Jesus must have a human will.

Fatal to the Gospel

And that is intimately related to the fourth problem with Monothelitism: it is fatal to the Gospel itself, for if Christ was not Himself truly human, He could not be the Mediator between God and men. Apart from Christ’s genuine humanity, the sons of Adam are left to cry with Job, “He is not a man as I am that I may answer Him, that we may go to court together. There is no umpire between us, who may lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:32–33).

Maximus the Confessor famously argued this point by appealing to another well-known trinitarian maxim from the fourth century, this one from the pen of Gregory of Nazianzus (329–390). In defending the full humanity of Christ against the Apollinarians, who claimed that Christ assumed only a human body but not a human soul, Gregory famously argued, “That which is not assumed is not healed.”

That is to say, Christ is our Savior by His substitutionary saving work. He saves us first of all by taking on a full and true human nature (Phil 2:7), so that He is genuinely “consubstantial with us according to the manhood,” able to stand in man’s place as a genuine man, representing us in every way (1 Tim 2:5). If there were an aspect of humanity that Christ failed to assume to Himself, then that aspect could not be healed by His substitutionary saving work. If Christ was to heal the human will (along with the rest of human nature), he had to have assumed a human will in His incarnation.

Besides, the whole point of the incarnation was that our penalty had to be paid by a true man. Without a human will, Jesus lacks something that is constitutive of our nature, and is thus disqualified from standing in our place.

Still further, our Savior must not only satisfy the penal demands of the law by dying on behalf of sinners. He must also satisfy the positive demands of the law by obeying on behalf of sinners (Matt 3:15; 5:20; Gal 4:4–6). Jesus is the Last Adam (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45), come to succeed precisely where the first Adam had failed (1 Cor 15:21–22; cf. Luke 4:1–13). His obedience to the law of God would be the substance of the righteousness credited to those who believe (Rom 5:18–19; cf. 4:3–6; 2 Cor 5:21).

But that obedience had to be the obedience of a genuine man. If Christ, the Last Adam, cannot choose—as a man—to walk in obedience to God’s law, precisely in the way the first Adam failed, then He cannotstand in our place as our Substitute and accomplish our justification as our federal head.[5] And He cannot make that choice as a man without a human will. Wellum is right when he says, “It is only by affirming that Christ has a human will that we can do justice to the obedience of the Son as a man which is so foundational to Christ’s work for us.”[6]

A Biblical Doctrine

It’s often said or implied that such a doctrine, while historically well-attested and theologically necessary, lacks textual foundation. But that is not so. Scripture speaks of Jesus’ human will when it speaks of Him willing (θέλω) to do things that are not proper to deity, like moving from one location to another (John 1:43), drinking or not (Matt 27:34), or obeying (Mark 14:12; Phil 2:8). Scripture speaks of Jesus’ divine will, for example, in Matthew 23:37, when He says He often wanted to gather the children of Jerusalem throughout her history of killing her prophets and stoning God’s messengers. He identifies Himself as the patient God who desired (θέλω), long before His incarnation, to deliver His people.

If Christ was to heal the human will, he had to have assumed a human will in His incarnation.

Another example of Christ’s divine will is seen in John 5:21, where Jesus grounds His equality with the Father (5:18) in their inseparable operations (5:19). In verse 21, He says that one of those divine works which He shares with the Father is giving spiritual life—a prerogative of deity—“to whom He wills.”

It is true, as has been shown, that if you deny Dyothelitism, you cannot consistently maintain a Chalcedonian Christology or Nicene Trinitarianism, you undermine the genuine humanity of Christ by suggesting He lacks a human will, and thus you undermine the Gospel which is founded upon representative substitution. But it is also true that Dyothelitism is a biblical doctrine.

Conclusion

Therefore, what at first may seem like an arcane dispute about meaningless doctrinal minutia is revealed to be fundamental to the humanity of our Mediator and thus the ground of all our hope. The Third Council of Constantinople concluded the same and condemned Monothelitism, establishing Dyothelitism as the orthodox teaching of the church. The faculty of will is a property of nature, not person. And since the one man, Christ Jesus, subsists in both divine and human natures, He has two wills: divine and human. It was by virtue of His human will that He made human choices—choices to resist temptation, to obey God’s law in the place of sinners, and to bear the curse of God’s law in the place of those same sinners.

Notably, Dyothelitism also relates quite closely to a contemporary controversy in the evangelical church: the EFS/ERAS debate. Since (a) the Godhead is three persons subsisting in one divine nature, and since (b) will is a property of nature and not person, therefore, (c) there are not three faculties of will in God by virtue of the three persons, but one faculty of will in God by virtue of the one divine nature.

Consubstantial with one another, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exercise volitions by virtue of the identical faculty of willing. Since the single divine will cannot be “subjected” or “subordinated” to itself, there can be no eternal functional subordination or eternal relations of authority and submission within the Trinity.

[1] Interestingly, Wellum notes, “In the Patristic era, the word-flesh Christologies of Arius, Apollinarius, et al., also identified ‘person’ with ‘soul,’ ‘will,’ ‘mind,’ which orthodoxy rejected” (God the Son Incarnate, 338n101). If Chalcedon located will in the nature, while Arius and Apollinarius located will in the person, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that locating the will in the person is heretical.

[2] Besides this, I’d argue that most Christians implicitly know that will is a property of nature and not person. When we engage in the debate over the bondage and freedom of the will and man’s depravity, we explain the reality that, apart from regenerating grace, though man’s will is free to make choices, it is not free not to choose rightly. Man is not an automaton unable to choose between alternatives, but he is depraved, unable to choose righteousness. He has a will, but his will is bound to act in accordance with his nature.

[3] For example, the Father creates (1 Cor 8:6), the Son creates (Col 1:16), and the Spirit creates (Gen 1:2; Ps 33:6), but there is only one act of creating and thus only one cosmos created.

[4] Note, this is not to suggest either (a) that Jesus was peccable (He was not, John 5:19), or (b) that Jesus was tempted internally (He was only tempted externally, John 14:30; cf. Matt 4:1–11; Jas 1:14).

[5] Wellum, God the Son Incarnate, 348.

[6] Ibid., 346–47, emphasis original.

The Importance of Confessing One Will in God

The inspired creedal imperative, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!” is not merely an appeal to ethical monism—meaning that we Christians are to worship the one true God alone. The oneness of God in Deuteronomy 6:4 speaks to the metaphysical reality that separates or distinguishes Him from idols and the false gods of the nations: His simplicity. The Second London Confession of Faith elucidates this notion of God’s simplicity by writing, “The Lord our God is but one… without body, parts, or passions.” However, before we can understand what it means for God to be one or simple, we must first understand what it means to be a creature.

Creatures are composed of what we are (i.e., an essence) and that we are (i.e., our existence). However, the dilemma is that creatures cannot be the cause of their existence, for no essence can precede and be the cause of its existence (e.g., Lily did not bring herself into existence). Consequently, the cause of creaturely existence must be found outside the domain of creation, and its existence must not be caused—it must be the fount of existence. If one were to turn to philosophical demonstration to discover such a cause, one could postulate the existence of an uncaused transcending cause of all things whose existence is of itself (i.e., self-subsisting being). But of more sure footing for the believer, Scripture reveals that this simple or non-composed Creator, whose existence is from Himself and not another, is the One whom Exodus 3:14 calls “I AM WHO I AM.” Or, as illustrated in the burning bush, it is I AM whose fire or existence does not depend on another but whose life burns from Himself.

Turning our attention to God’s will, its relevancy when considering His oneness lies in preserving monotheism. To highlight this concern, we must consider what establishes the ability to will. Put into question form: “What provides a person with the power to will compared to an inanimate creature like a rock?” The simple answer is its nature. A creature’s nature determines what powers it can exercise. For instance, a bird’s nature gives rise to the possibility of flying, unlike a human’s nature. Similarly, a creature possesses the ability to will if its nature provides the capacity of said power.

When considering the philosophical and historical articulation of the will, it has typically been distinguished between the sensible (or lower) appetite and the intellectual (or higher) appetite. The sensible will desires goods based on sensory perception (sight, hearing, taste, touch, etc.). For example, it is good for the nature of an animal to eat; thus, when said good is presented to it via the senses, the will is aroused and motivates the animal to pursue it.

In contrast, although man possesses these same sensible desires of the will as some other creatures, he also exercises dominion over these sensible desires by a higher power of the soul that distinguishes him from the rest of creation: reason. In other words, although all things are created in the likeness of God—because effects in some way reflect their cause—Scripture asserts that man is created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:27), and what makes man in God’s image is his power or capacity to reason (i.e., the intellect). Consequently, for man, it is the intellect that guides the will. One could even say that every person has the power to will because every person possesses the power of intellect, which is able to perceive things as good in themselves, and, in turn, the will is drawn out to possess and rest in those goods.

Scripture asserts that man is created in the image and likeness of God, and what makes man in God’s image is his power or capacity to reason.

Furthermore, the intellect can distinguish between lesser and higher goods and choose the higher, although it may cause harm or difficulty. The preeminent example of man deferring the lower will’s desire for a greater good was our Lord when He cried out in the garden of Gethsemane, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done” (Verse reference). For our Lord, it was a good to preserve life, but it was a greater good to obey the will of His Father.

Correspondingly, because God is an intellectual Being, this entails that He, too, possesses a will. In simpler terms, it is the nature of divinity to will. However, this does not entail that God wills as man does: that some outside good moves His will. If this were so, God would be susceptible to passions and mutability as man, thus consigning Him to the order of creaturely being as its chief Being. Moreover, neither can we say that God’s will is a property of divinity, as it is a property that a person exercises; instead, following the maxim that “all that is in God is God,” so, too, is God’s will one with His essence.

At this juncture, we arrive at a difficulty after contrasting God’s will with the creature’s will. Specifically, how do we reconcile God’s one will with the three divine persons? Or we could ask: “Does experience not testify that each person has their own will; hence, should not each divine person also?” To answer, we must first consider how each human person possesses their own will because each is an individuated instance of humanity: human nature, not personhood, gives rise to the power to will. However, this metaphysical sequence breaks down for the divine persons because each divine person is not a separate individuated instance of divinity. Instead, “A divine person is nothing but the divine essence . . . subsisting in an especial manner.”[1] In other words, the Father is the principle or fount of divinity as the unbegotten One; the Son’s divinity is from the Father as His begotten Word; and the Spirit’s divinity is from the Father and Son as Love proceeding. Therefore, because each person possesses the entirety of the divine essence according to their particular manner of subsistence, each divine person also possesses the one will of God.

If one were to deny that each divine person possesses the one divine will according to their particular manner of subsistence by positing multiple wills in God (i.e., one will for each divine person), then what one would run the risk of is seriously undermining their commitment to monotheism. The reason is that, as shown above, the ability to will is rooted in nature. Hence, if there are multiple wills in God, this would metaphysically entail that there must be multiple natures. Consequently, if there are multiple natures because there are multiple wills, the best one could then conceive the Trinity as is a society of “Gods” in unison or bound by some overarching principle. However, Christians do not believe the Lord to be one in unison of wills as a society of divine persons. Instead, we confess God to be one in Being and will, with each divine person possessing the one divine nature and will according to their particular manner of subsistence.

In conclusion, the consideration of the one will of God is a notion that safeguards Christians from practically inferring polytheism. Moreover, it is the one will of God that we can find our rest in because God is not like man that He should change His mind. In other words, because God’s will is one with His essence, this entails that the very divine will that chose us, that redeemed us by sending God the Son to die for sinners such as us, and that promises to present us before Himself as holy and blameless in glory, is a will that cannot change. Therefore, with this blessed assurance that God’s will for our salvation lies in His immutable nature, we can confidently strive on our journey to Zion above to follow our Lord’s words and example, “Not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

[1] John Owen, Communion with the Triune God (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), 2:407.

“You just had to be there!”

We fall back on this excuse when words fail to capture the precise reality of an experience—often a comedic interaction or visual beauty. The reality is that reality itself is often hard to describe. We do our best to describe it with words, but we’ve all experienced the frustration of falling short.

This is especially true when we use our words to describe God. Herman Bavinck asks, “The moment we dare to speak about God the question arises: How can we?”[1] The same question can be asked of the person of Christ: When we dare to speak about the One who is both infinite God and finite man, how can we?

Scripture tells us Jesus slept, ate, walked, and learned new things. But it also tells us He created the universe, sustains it, and is omniscient. You can see the dilemma—how do we accurately describe Jesus when He has these seemingly contradictory categories?

We can navigate this difficulty through a practice known as partitive exegesis. Partitive exegesis presupposes that Christ’s two natures are unified in His person without confusion, change, division, or separation. Therefore, we must recognize and maintain the distinction between Christ’s two natures when we read the Bible.[2] While that may sound complicated, this practice arises from Scripture itself—it is an inspired way of describing the reality of the incarnation.

A Biblical Pattern

As we read through the New Testament, we see passages variously emphasize attributes of both Christ’s humanity and His divinity. Consider these five ways that the Bible makes statements about Christ.

1. When Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am,” the person is the subject, but the attribute (eternality) is only appropriate for the divine nature (John 8:58).

2. When Jesus said, “I thirst,” the person is the subject, but thirst is only appropriate for the human nature (John 19:28).

3. Titles like “Redeemer” or “King” are applied to Christ and is appropriate for both natures (Psalm 10:16; Luke 1:32–33).

So far, so good. But Scripture also contains more complicated statements about Christ.

4. Some things are ascribed to Christ that are appropriate to the human nature but predicated on Christ as divine. In Revelation 1:17–18, Christ identifies Himself as “the first and the last” (a divine title), then He says He “was dead” (something only possible for a human). A human quality (death) is applied to the person even though the Son as God is emphasized in this passage.

5. On the other hand, some things are ascribed to Christ that are appropriate to the divine nature but predicated on Christ as human. John 6:62 refers to “the Son of Man ascending to where He was before.” “Son of Man” emphasizes Christ’s humanity, but ascending to “where He was before” can only be truly said of Christ as divine.[3]

In each of these instances, Scripture applies a property true of one or both natures to the person. It is our job as interpreters to discern which attributes are appropriate for each nature.

While some people may object that we read too strong of a distinction between the natures, the Bible itself uses this logic as well. Romans 1:3 says that Christ “was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh.” Christ is not descended from David according to the divinity. This is logically obvious, but Paul makes it verbally explicit. [4]

Partitive exegesis is an attempt to apply this same inspired logic to every biblical statement about Christ. Some things are true of Christ according to His humanity and some things are true of Christ according to His divinity.

This way of thinking was worked out in the early church. As Chalcedon states, “The distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person.” Because the two natures are unified in the person of Christ, anything said of either nature is true of the person (“concurring in one Person”) while remaining untrue of the other nature (“the property of each nature being preserved”).

Yet, some confusion may arise in light of examples 4–5 above. How do we interpret those verses that apply the property of one nature to the other?

The Communication of Properties

The properties of both natures are predicated on the person. However, because both natures are united in the one person, Scripture seemingly attributes properties of one nature to the other. This biblical way of speaking has become known as the “communication of idioms” or “communication of properties.”

This is described in the 1689 London Baptist Confession, 8.7: “Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture, attributed to the person denominated by the other nature.”

Consider these verses:

Acts 20:28, “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.”

1 Corinthians 2:8, “The wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

Zechariah 12:10, [Yahweh says] “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.”

In each example, something human (blood, crucifixion, and death) is predicated of divinity (God, the Lord of Glory, and Yahweh). Does God, who is spirit (John 4:24) have blood? Can the Lord, who has life in Himself (John 5:26), be crucified? Can Yahweh be “pierced?”

The only way any of these statements can be true is if they refer to a single person who is both God and man. Concerning biblical passages like the ones listed above, Theodore Beza explains,

In the first place, these statements are made by means of the communication of individual properties, which truly does not exist. For if it were really true—that is, if the properties of the divine nature in actual fact belonged to the human nature, or vice versa—there would be no union, but a confusion. But it is put like this so that the unity of the person might be understood.[5]

When Beza says the statements like those from Acts 20:28 are not “really true,” he means that they are attributed verbally instead of ontologically. It is not that God has blood, but the person who is God has blood as a man. Therefore, it is appropriate because of the unity of the person to say “God has blood.” John Calvin explains, “It very frequently happens, on account of the unity of the Person of Christ, that what properly belongs to one nature is applied to another.”

How can both statements be true? How can Jesus be in heaven and with His disciples? The only possible answer to these questions is that He is both God and man. God is omnipresent (1 Kings 8:27; Psalm 139:7–10; Jer. 23:24) and this did not change when the Son assumed a human nature. This must be the case because it is impossible for God to change (Mal. 3:6; Jas. 1:17).[6]

Calvin gives us the Chalcedonian key here: The communication of properties is possible “on account of the unity of the Person of Christ.” And as Beza notes above, this close unity of the two natures in the one person teaches us about the person of Christ. We know that the natures are unified in the person by the very fact that both are predicated of Him—even to the point of verbally applying properties of one nature to the other.

A Test Case: Divine Presence and Human Distance

What does partitive exegesis look like in practice? We can use the divine attribute of omnipresence as a test case. On the one hand, Christ made it clear to His disciples that He was leaving them: “It is to your advantage that I go away” (John 15:7; see Acts 1:9–11). On the other hand, Christ makes statements that indicate His continuing presence with the disciples after His ascension: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

God is omnipresent and this did not change when the Son assumed a human nature.

The Son lost nothing in the incarnation, but instead assumed a human nature. As it pertains to His presence, He did not lose omnipresence, but assumed locality as a man. His infinite being was veiled in a finite location, but not fully contained in it. So, although Christ is truly a man and localized in one place as such, He is simultaneously the omnipresent God.

This mind-bending reality was helpfully articulated in the period of the Reformation. The belief that Christ is omnipresent as God yet localized as man has come to be known as the extra Calvinisticum. This title is somewhat misleading because Calvin did not invent the doctrine. It is simply associated with his name because of how it played into the Reformation debates over the Lord’s Table.

Positively, the extra Calvinisticum teaches that God the Son retains all his divine attributes, specifically omnipresence. Negatively, (because of the positive point) the extra Calvinisticum teaches that God the Son is not contained within the human nature which he assumed.[7] Calvin poetically articulates this position,

For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein. Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning.[8]

The Genevan Reformer carefully avoids two errors here. First, he refuses to divide the person of Christ. The Son who fills all things is the same person who was born of a virgin. Second, he refuses to blend Christ’s two natures—humanity is not omnipresent and divinity is not contained locally.

Do you see how partitive exegesis helps us answer the question of how Christ is both personally present with us but also in heaven? It faithfully harmonizes texts like Matthew 28:20 and Acts 1:9–11. Those verses that indicate omnipresence refer to Christ by His divinity and those that indicate local movement or limitation refer to Christ by His humanity.

Why We Need Partitive Exegesis

Concerning the time of His return, Jesus says in Matthew 24:36, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” This verse tells us that the Son is ignorant of something (the time of His return).

Based on everything we’ve seen above, how should we interpret this statement? Is ignorance appropriate to Christ’s divinity, humanity, or both? We know that God is omniscient (1 John 3:20), so ignorance cannot be true of divinity. Therefore, it must be true of Christ according to His humanity.

Some will object that this interpretation neuters the force of Matthew 24:36, but this conclusion is not necessary. Christ’s statement is still true—the One who is God is ignorant of something as a man. Understanding that Christ’s ignorance is only possible for Him as a man in no way undermines the meaning of this verse. In fact, it should cause us to marvel at the fact that Christ is both ignorant and omniscient!

Furthermore, we frequently interpret the Bible this way without even realizing it. We don’t read a passage about Jesus getting hungry (Mark 11:12) and assume that God suddenly has a digestive system. Instead, we know that hunger indicates the genuine humanity of the Son. Likewise, when we read that Jesus upholds the universe (Col. 1:17), we don’t assume that He is doing so with human hands.

Whatever is said of either nature is true of the person, but what is said of one nature is not necessarily true of the other nature. So when Scripture makes a statement about Christ, we have to ask ourselves, “Is this statement true of both natures or just one?” Then, “If it is true of only one nature, which one?”

The One who is God suffered on the cross as a man. The One who is man upheld the universe while it happened.

If we do not interpret Scriptures concerning Christ correctly—in light of the reality they describe—we end up with a God who thirsts, sleeps, suffers, submits, and lacks knowledge. We also end up with a man who is omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. If we fail to retain the properties of each nature to themselves, we blend them and start on the short road to heresy. In fact, this is exactly how certain heretics have interpreted Matthew 24:36.[9]

Did My Sovereign Die?

Partitive exegesis is a way of making explicit what many Christians do intuitively. If you’ve ever sung Isaac Watt’s hymn “Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed,” you’re familiar with partitive language. The opening lines state,

Alas! and did my Savior bleed,

And did my Sovereign die!

The third verse goes even further:

Well might the sun in darkness hide,

And shut its glories in,

When God, the mighty maker, died

For his own creature’s sin.

Did God die? Yes—as a man! God the Son suffered, bled, and died on the cross as a real human while retaining full divinity. Cyril of Alexandria embraces this reality: “To the same one we attribute both the divine and human characteristics, and we also say that to the same one belongs the birth and the suffering on the cross since he appropriated everything that belonged to his own flesh, while ever remaining impassible in the nature of the Godhead.”[10]

The One who is God suffered on the cross as a man. The One who is man upheld the universe while it happened. The one undivided person is the same in both cases. And instead of simplifying this mystery, we should be compelled by it to adore Christ more. This great mystery of God the Son in two natures should cause us to continue singing with Watts,

Was it for crimes that I have done,

he groaned upon the tree?

Amazing pity! Grace unknown!

And love beyond degree![11]

[1] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2, God and Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 30. Emphasis added.

[2] I am borrowing terminology from Jamieson and Wittman here: “Partitive exegesis discerns the precise referent and scope of scriptural statements about Christ. Since Scripture proclaims a single Christ who is both divine and human, partitive exegesis recognizes and maintains a distinction between Christ’s divine and human natures.” R.B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman, Biblical Reasoning (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022), 155.

[3] This list is adapted from John F. Walvoord, Jesus Christ Our Lord (Chicago: Moody Press, 1969), 117–118.

[4] R.B. Jamieson and Tyler Wittman explain, “Why does Paul specify that Jesus’s human lineage is from the seed of David? Because that is not the only lineage he has. Jesus is not only David’s son but also God’s Son. So, even though Paul’s partitive qualifier [i.e., ‘according to the flesh’] only faces one direction, we can fittingly paraphrase Paul’s partition with a Chalcedonian parallelism. In Romans 1:3, Jesus is God’s Son as regards his divinity, and David’s son as regards his humanity.”  Jamieson and Wittman, Biblical Reasoning, 157.

[5] Theodore Beza, A Clear and Simple Treatise on the Lord’s Supper, trans. David C. Noe (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2016), 67.

[6] Some people have interpreted Paul’s claim that the Son “emptied Himself” in Philippians 2:7 to mean that He “set aside” or “gave up” certain divine attributes in the incarnation. Thankfully, Paul explains what “emptied Himself” means in the very next phrase. He writes that the Son “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” For a complete explanation of Philippians 2:6–8, see Mike Riccardi’s article “Veiled in Flesh the Godhead See: A Study of the Kenosis of Christ” in The Master’s Seminary Journal 30/1 (Spring 2019): 103–127 and Stephen J. Wellum, God the Son Incarnate (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 174–179.

[7] Paul Helm offers a succinct definition of extra Calvinisticum: “This is the view that in the Incarnation God the Son retained divine properties such as immensity and omnipresence and that therefore Christ was not physically confined within the limits of a human.” Richard Muller explains further, “The Reformed argued that the Word is fully united to but never totally contained within the human nature and therefore, even in the incarnation, is to be conceived of as beyond or outside of (extra) the human nature.” Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 58 and Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 116.

[8] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), II.13.4.

[9] See, for instance, the Socinian John Biddle, A Brief History of the Unitarians (1691), 4.

[10] Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, trans. John Anthony McGuckin (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladamir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 133.

[11] Some of the material in this post was originally posted here and here.

Is the Son of God inferior to God? The answer to this question, after the incarnation, is both “yes and no.” The Son of God is indeed inferior to God, according to His assumed human nature, but He is not inferior to God, according to His divine nature. To understand this answer, it is necessary to understand that the incarnate Son of God has two natures, a true divine nature and a true human nature, united in the one person of the Son of God. At the incarnation, the eternal Son of God took to Himself a true human nature. In theology, this union of Christ’s two natures in one person is called the “hypostatic union” which refers to a “personal union” of true God and true man.

The Hypostatic Union

Consider the hypostatic union in a bit more detail. The term “hypostatic” is from a Greek word, hupostasis, or person, and refers to the manner in which a rational nature subsists. The term “person,” according to Boethius, refers to “an individual substance of a rational nature.”[1] Others have defined it as “subsistence endowed with reason.”[2] “In general, ‘person,’ is defined as a substance, or individual nature, endowed with intelligence, subsisting by itself, really and truly distinguished from others by its own incommunicable property.”[3]

To understand the hypostatic union, it is necessary to reflect on the terms “nature” and “person.” The difference between a rational nature and a person is that a person refers to the particular way in which a rational nature acts. Rational natures do not act. Only persons act. Or to put it differently, rational natures subsist as particular persons, which act distinctively within and by those natures. 

Consider three examples of rational natures that subsist as persons: God, angels, and human beings. God’s being is rational, and His nature exists in three ways, persons, or subsistences: the Father is neither begotten nor proceeding, the Son is eternally begotten from the Father, and the Spirit is eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. Angels also have a rational nature, and each individual angel subsists as a particular person, or way of being and acting as an angel. Each human being also has a rational nature, and each individual human being exists as a particular person, or way of acting as a human.

This brings us to the Lord Jesus Christ. At the incarnation, the eternal person of the Son of God assumed a human nature. The eternal Son of God is nothing other than the very being of God subsisting personally, and thus at the incarnation, the whole divine essence, subsisting in the manner of the Son, joined Himself to a human nature. The Bible speaks of the incarnation of the Son of God in various ways. It says “the Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14), “came in the flesh” (1 Jn 4:2-3), “took the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7), was made a “partaker of flesh and blood” (Heb 2:14), and was “manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim 3:16).

The Son of God is indeed inferior to God, according to His assumed human nature, but He is not inferior to God, according to His divine nature.

But how are the divine and human natures united in Christ? What sort of union is it? It is not an essential union, in which the two essences are blended together. It is not a covenantal union, such that the two natures simply agree together. It is not a natural union as in the union of the human body and the soul. It is not an external union, like the union of God with the angel of the Lord, or of angels to their bodily manifestations.  Rather it is a true personal union.

But what is meant by personal union? The great Reformed theologian, Francis Turretin helpfully describes the personal union of Christ’s two natures. He said that God the Son (the divine nature subsisting) assumed to Himself a human nature, which does not subsist in the manner of a human person. It is crucial to grasp that the human nature of Christ is not a human person and has no personal subsistence of its own. If the human nature subsisted, it would be a human person, not a divine person. If it is claimed that the human nature subsisted as the Son of God, then the human nature would subsist as God, which is impossible because the finite cannot grasp or contain the infinite. Rather, Christ’s human nature, a true body and a reasonable soul, which did not subsist personally, was assumed into the person of the Word, or the Son, and was so joined to Him that the human nature became “substantial with the Logos.”[4]

Turretin goes on to explain the way this personal union happens. He says that the union of the two natures is by a “personal sustenation,” activity, or operation, of the Son of God within and by the human nature, such that Christ’s human nature really is one of the two natures of the Son of God.[5] Put differently, the action of God the Son within, throughout, and by His rational human nature is nothing other than the very person of God the Son, according to His human nature. Herman Bavinck, quoting Thomas, writes, “The human nature in Christ must be considered as though it were a kind of organ of the divine nature.”[6] The Triune God so acts upon a human nature that the resulting action, or personal operation, within, throughout, and by that nature is that of the Son of God.

The Incarnate Son

The hypostatic union means that after the incarnation and for all eternity afterwards, the eternal Son of God really has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, acting according to both natures at the same time. It means that when Mary conceived Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, she really carried God the Son in her womb. In Luke 1:31-32, the angel Gabriel said to Mary, “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” Therefore, Mary is rightly called “Theotokos,” the God-bearer.

The incarnation further means that when Christ died on the cross for our sins, the Son of God Himself really died for our sins, according to His human nature. The divine nature cannot die. But God the Son can die, according to His human nature by virtue of the hypostatic union. 1 Corinthians 15:3 says, “Christ died for our sins.” Without the hypostatic union, all we would be able to say is that a human nature died for us. But a human nature in itself cannot possibly atone for our sins. We must be able to say that the eternal Son of God Himself died for our sins, according to His human nature, and He did so by virtue of the hypostatic union.

But while it is true that the Son of God truly assumed a human nature into His person, it is also true that He continued to be God, and to act according to His divine nature. Thus, while the Son of God came down from heaven, and was born of a virgin, He did so in such a way that He never left heaven (Jn 3:13). The Son, according to His divine nature, remained in heaven and fully present in every place, even when He became flesh and dwelt among us. Similarly, though the Son of God ascended into heaven, He did so in such a way that He never left earth  (Matt 28:20). Though the Son of God, according to His human nature, went back into heaven, His divine nature is present with us forever.

The Son as Not Inferior to God

The Bible speaks in ways that must be understood in terms of what has been called “partitive exegesis.” The Second London Confession 8.7 says, “Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture, attributed to the person denominated by the other nature.” Thus, sometimes, the Bible speaks of Christ and His actions in terms of His divine nature, and sometimes it speaks of Christ and His actions according to His human nature. Other times, it speaks of the human nature in terms of the divine nature and the divine nature in terms of the human nature (Jn 3:3; Acts 20:28). This is appropriate because of the real personal union of the two natures.

We must be able to say that the eternal Son of God Himself died for our sins, according to His human nature, and He did so by virtue of the hypostatic union.

Many passages of Scripture teach that Christ, the Son of God, is not inferior to God, but is in fact God Himself. Scripture says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1); He declares, “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30), which does not mean that they are the same person, but that they share the same essence. Hebrews 1:8 says, “of the Son he says, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever;” and after the resurrection, “Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 10:28); (Heb 1:8); He is declared to be the “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev 19:16). The Bible teaches that Christ created everything: “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (Jn 1:3); He is present everywhere: “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matt 18:20); He is all powerful: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18). He does not change: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8); He forgives sin: “Your sins are forgiven” (Lk 7:48).

None of these attributes belong to the Son’s human nature, but only to the Son, according to His divine nature. Therefore, the Son of God, according to his divine nature is equal to God. But that is not the whole story.

The Son as Inferior to God

The Bible teaches that the Son of God, according to His human nature, is in fact inferior to God. And that must be the case, since how could the Son of God identify with us, substitute for us, or represent us, unless He assumes a human nature, which is inferior to God? The ancient creeds recognize this fact. The Athanasian Creed declares that the incarnate Son is “Perfect God; and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father as touching his Manhood. Who although he is God and Man; yet he is not two, but one Christ” (emphasis added). Therefore, the incarnate Son stands in a twofold natural relation to God the Father. With respect to His divine nature, He is equal to the Father, but with respect to His human nature, He is inferior to the Father.

The Bible plainly teaches that the Son, according to His human nature, is inferior to God. He changed and grew: “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (Lk 2:52); He experienced hunger: “He was hungry” (Matt 4:2); He experienced thirst: “I thirst” (Jn 19:28); He became tired: “Jesus wearied” (Jn 4:6); He was tempted: “He Himself suffered when tempted” (Heb 2:18); He was weak: “He was crucified in weakness” (2 Cor 13:4); He died: “He breathed His last” (Lk 23:46). None of these things can be true of the divine nature. They can only be true of Christ’s human nature, which is inferior to the divine.

One text that shows the inferiority of the Son of God, according to His human nature is 2 Corinthians 8:9, which says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” The Son of God, prior to the incarnation, was rich only, but at the incarnation, He became poor, according to His human nature. Yet it is important for us to understand that He only became poor (according to His human nature) in such a way that He remained rich (according to His divine nature). The only way we can become rich through Christ’s poverty is if He also remains rich! Thus, the Son of God, according to His human nature is inferior to God the Father, but He is equal to God the Father, according to His divine nature.

Summary and Conclusion

To summarize, Jesus Christ is true God and true man, united in the one person of the eternal Son of God. Therefore, He is equal to God the Father, according to His divine nature, but inferior to God the Father, according to His human nature. This means that the incarnate Son of God is simultaneously weak and all powerful, ignorant and all knowing, located in space and fully present everywhere, dependent and independent, creature and Creator, limited and infinite, temporal and timelessly eternal, changing and unchangeable, subject and sovereign, visible and invisible, and so forth.

This is absolutely necessary for our salvation. If Christ were less than God, He could not save us. If He were more than man, He could not be our substitute. JC Ryle puts it well:

I find a deep mine of comfort in this thought, that Jesus is perfect Man no less than perfect God. He in whom I am told by Scripture to trust is not only a great High Priest, but a feeling High Priest. He is not only a powerful Savior, but a sympathizing Savior. He is not only the Son of God, mighty to save, but the Son of Man, able to feel….

Had my Savior been God only, I might perhaps have trusted Him, but I never could have come near to Him without fear. Had my Savior been Man only, I might have loved Him, but I never could  have felt sure that he was able to take away my sins. But, blessed be God, my Savior is God as well as Man, Man as well as God – God, and so able to deliver me – Man, and so able to feel with me.[7]

[1]    Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, q. 29, a. 1.

[2]    William Den Boer and Reimer A. Faber, eds., Synopsis of a Purer Theology, vol. 1 (Davenant: China, 2023), 70.

[3]    Ibid., 71.

[4]    Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1994), 312.

[5]    Ibid.

[6]    Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3 (Baker: Grand Rapids, 2006), 307; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 3, q. 4, a. 2, ad. 2.

[7]    JC Ryle, Holiness (Charles Nolan: Moscow, 2001), 238-239.

As a relatively new believer in Christ, I read a book on Christology (i.e., the study of Christ). Most of the material was over my head. I noticed that the author used technical terminology of which he largely assumed his readers were somewhat familiar. Two terms especially come to mind: person and nature. When Christians confess that our Lord is one person, two natures, what do they mean? Most believers are aware of Christmas hymns which were written to depict the Scripture’s teaching on the incarnation (i.e., God becoming man). One example of this is found in the well-known hymn “O come, all ye faithful.”

The second line reads as follows: “God of God, Light of Light; Lo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb: Very God, Begotten, not created; O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.” The fourth line in that hymn includes these words: “Born this happy morning… Word of the Father, Late in flesh appearing…” Both the second and fourth lines of this familiar hymn contain startling language. The hymn-writer is actually borrowing from ancient Christian creedal statements. Our Lord is God, yet “he abhors not the virgin’s womb”?  He is very God yet “Late in flesh appearing”? The one Christ is both God and man? The one person of the Son is our two-natured redeemer? The answer to these questions is a resounding yes.

The hymn cited above and the creedal statements behind it are an attempt to explain what Scripture itself asserts about our Lord. For example, 1 Timothy 3:16a says, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh” (NKJV). Mark these words carefully: “God was manifested in the flesh.” During the incarnate ministry of our Lord on the earth many years ago, it was God who was manifested and it was in the flesh that he was manifested. Here we have one Lord Jesus Christ, both God and flesh. Another famous text which asserts what we call the incarnation of the Word, or Son, is found in John 1:14, which reads, “And the Word became flesh…” There are several such texts in the New Testament (especially) which require careful explanation. What is required is not the bare repetition of the words of Scripture but an explanation of their meaning. In other words, sometimes it is necessary to use words not in the written word of God to explain the written word of God. The term Trinity is one such example. Similarly, we use the terms person and nature to best account for Holy Scripture’s teaching on our two-natured redeemer. I want to define these terms then show how the terms so defined help us understand Scripture’s teaching on Christ as both very God and very man in one person. I will also introduce readers to the well-known language of hypostatic union.

By “person” is meant the who or the acting subject. Let me illustrate this. If deacons of a given church observed that a window was broken in the fellowship hall, they might ask “Who did this? Who was the acting subject to cause this effect?” They find out it was Joe. Joe is a person, an acting agent who causes certain things. By “nature,” on the other hand, is meant the what of an acting subject that allows him to act as he acts. We might say the thing by which he acts. If it is asked, “How did Joe do this?” The answer could be: by punching it with his fist. If we thought a bit more about Joe, we would conclude, Joe has a fist and is able to cause it to break a window. And he is able to do that because he has a body which is moved by his soul. Joe is a human person with a human nature by which he does things.

So “person” refers to an acting agent and “nature” refers to the agency by which an agent or person acts. By “hypostatic union” is meant that the Son of God incarnate is one “who” (one person) yet two “whats” (natures) united in him by which he acts. The two “whats” are the divine nature and the human nature, natures by which he (i.e., the one person) acts. If we ask, who is Christ? We rightly answer the Son of God incarnate. If we ask, what is Christ? We rightly answer God and man in one person. In terms of persons, nature is that by virtue of which they know, will, and act. The one person of the incarnate Son acts by virtue of two natures. Persons are “whos” or the active subjects of natures. With reference to our incarnate Lord, he is one person acting conjointly by virtue of two natures. He is one subject or agent, the Son of God incarnate, acting or operating by virtue of or according to two agencies—his divine nature and his human nature. These “two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, were inseparably joined together in one Person: without conversion, composition, or confusion…” (2 LCF 8.2). There is a saying that seeks to capture this Christian confession: “’I am what I was’ (to wit, God) ‘nor was I what I am’ (namely man) ‘now I am called both’ (to wit, God and man).”[1]Great, indeed, is the mystery of godliness!

During the incarnate ministry of our Lord on the earth many years ago, it was God who was manifested and it was in the flesh that he was manifested.

Let’s look at some important texts from John’s Gospel, chapter 1. In John 1:1–2 we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” The Word is said to be “in the beginning,” “with God,” and “God.” So there was in the beginning the Word and God but the Word is also named God. We will come back to this. John 1:3 says, “All things were made through Him [i.e., “the Word”], and without Him nothing was made that was made.” These words introduce readers to creation, effected by virtue of the Word or Son. Then in verse 14 we read, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Here is the incarnation of the Word. The order in this passage is very instructive. First “the Word” and “God” (vv. 1 and 2), then creation (v. 3), and then incarnation (v. 14). This order is not merely to be observed, but it must condition our reading of the entire Gospel of John.

The difficulty here is that the Creator, the Word, “became flesh.” How do we parse this in a manner that makes scriptural sense? Given that the Word is God, he is such eternally and immutably. Divinity cannot change but can bring being into being that had no being, including the flesh and soul of Christ. God creates. But flesh is not divinity and divinity is not flesh. Flesh can not be then be, but it cannot be divinity. It would no longer be flesh.

I think it is crucial to allow words in John 1:1–2 to help us while trying to make our way through a proper understanding of verse 14. The Word is God and was in the beginning with God. If the Word is a divine person, it seems the one he was with is also a divine person, since he is God but not the Word. Assuming the Word to be a divine person, how can he become flesh and still be the Word while being flesh? We must be careful here. Our scriptural instinct is to preserve his Wordness (his divinity) and his fleshness (his humanity)—a good instinct. But how is this best stated? This is a mine-field for bad takes so we must be careful. Remember that the Word is a person, a divine person. Do we want to say the Word is a person and the flesh he became is a person? I hope not. That is Nestorian (an ancient heresy, a two-personed view of our Lord incarnate). It is orthodox to say one person/two natures. Given Scripture, we ought to protect the unity of person but not to the neglect of the distinct natures. Recall the words of our Confession: very God, very man, one Christ!

Moving back to John 1:1–2 might help us again. The Word is a divine person. Given what the Old Testament says about God, the Word is omnipresent because he is God. If he is omnipresent, and if it is he, the Word, who becomes flesh, wasn’t he already present, though in a divine mode of presence before becoming flesh? How can he become present if already present? Could it be that “and the Word became flesh” means the Word became present in a new way? If by “flesh” John means man—body and soul—then though the Word was present by virtue of his divinity, he became present in a new mode by virtue of his assumed humanity.

The incarnation was not the relocation, an act of moving to a new place, by the Word from heaven to earth. It was the assumption, the taking and uniting to himself, of a created human nature by the eternal Son of the eternal Father. And, by the way, if “without Him nothing was made that was made” and the flesh he assumed was made, then we need to leave room in our explanations of the incarnation for the Word to be the creative cause of his own flesh. He could be its cause because he exists beyond it as very God.

The incarnation was not the relocation, an act of moving to a new place, by the Word from heaven to earth.

Carefully defining person, nature, and the union of the two natures in the one incarnate Son of God helps Christians articulate the mystery of the incarnation. It helps us explain how our Lord can be both God and man yet one Christ. It helps us work through difficulties that arise when contemplating the acts of our Lord during his state of humiliation (i.e., from his conception to his death/burial). During his state of humiliation, did our Lord sleep, hunger, thirst, weep, not know certain things, suffer, bleed, and die? Yes. Who did all these things? The Son of God incarnate. Did the Son of God incarnate do all these things according to both natures? No. He slept, hungered, thirsted, wept, did not know certain things, suffered, bled, and died according to the only nature that could experience those things—his human nature. But, while according to his human nature our Lord slept, hungered, thirsted, wept, was ignorant, suffered, bled, and died, what was he doing according to his divine nature at the same time? If it is the Word who is God who assumed flesh and God does not change, then in terms of his divine nature the one Son of God was acting according to it simultaneously doing the things God does. This is important to understand. While our Lord was among us many years ago, he retained “the form of God” (using Paul’s language in Phil. 2:6) while “taking the form of a bond servant” (Phil. 2:7). He was both “form of God” and “form of a bondservant” yet one Christ. The “taking the form of a bondservant” is his emptying; and the emptying is him “taking the form of a bondservant.” Remember, our Lord incarnate is very God and very man. He is one person (i.e., the Word, or Son, of God) yet two natures (i.e., divine and human); one agent/two agencies.

These are great revealed mysteries, indeed. One last question will suffice. Why? Why the Son of God incarnate? Why a two-natured redeemer? One way to answer this questions is as follows: “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal. 4:4–5). The Son was sent to assume our nature (“born of a woman”), to assume our duties (“born under the law”), and to assume our liabilities (“to redeem those who were under the law”) in order to bring us into the safe presence of God. He became man for us and for our salvation! Let us adore our two-natured redeemer, our Lord Jesus Christ, very God and very man. Amen!

[1] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Volume 2 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1994), 13.6.11 (2:313).

“Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:22–23, ESV). These words, written by the apostle John to Christians who were suffering the departure of some from among them into great error, strike us with a weightiness not easily missed. The confession of the Father and the Son is one unitary confession such that to deny one Person is to deny the other.

When we take a little time to contemplate these words, we are reminded of some other statements that are made in Scripture. For example, the Lord Jesus challenged his disciples to consider his identity. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is? . . . Who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:13, 15). The answers of the multitudes are varied as some identify him with John the Baptist, Elijah, and Jeremiah. Earlier, some even identified him—at least in terms of the power at work within him—with Beelzebul (i.e., Satan), the prince of demons (Matt 12:24). This is not Peter’s answer, however. His answer was one that corresponds with what is required in 1 John 2: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:26). Jesus tells Peter that the Father revealed this reality (Matt 16:17). Not only does the Father reveal who the Son is, but the Son reveals the Father as well.

Jesus had earlier told his disciples, “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt 11:27). What John says many years later, that confession of the Father and the Son are inseparable, fits with what he had learned at Jesus’ feet in those opening days of the gospel. In fact, John would go further, as would Paul (1 Cor 2), to say that this Confession is because the Holy Spirit bears witness to the identity of the Son (1 John 4; cf. Jn 15:26). The Spirit of God is indeed God, one with the Father and the Son, into whose singular Name we are baptized. The one God is confessed throughout the Scriptures, and this God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, distinct in Persons, the Son from the Father and the Spirit from the Father and the Son.

The confession of the Father and the Son is one unitary confession such that to deny one Person is to deny the other.

From even this brief tracing of the Christian’s knowledge of God in Christ, we can see that, in reality, to be a Christian is to be Trinitarian. Though precise terminology was developed through testing, we can say with the Athanasian Creed that whoever would (“Quicumque vult”) be saved must hold to the true faith, which is faith in the Trinity, and that the Trinity is that “which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved.” There are many things that go into a right understanding of the Trinity, and of course, our understanding will never be comprehensive (2LBCF 2.1), but here we are considering the fundamentals of the “Person-Nature distinction.” In working through this distinction, we are, in many ways, laying the groundwork for the articles that follow, so we will first look at some key Trinitarian grammar. Because Christians have been working at this for a long time, the precision can sometimes be difficult to understand immediately, so feel free to reread as you find yourself needing to.

Basics by Number

The reason for “paint by number” sheets is to help the aspiring artist create something in which the necessary colors all end up in the right place, preventing distortion of the image you are aiming to present. Perhaps something like that can be helpful to us here in Trinitarian theology. In Trinitarian theology, counting to five helps us to prevent distortion in our presentation of the Trinity.

One: Essence. Of course, believers have always confessed that God is one. He is the self-existent Creator (Gen 1:1), who visits Moses in the burning bush with the name “I AM” (Exod 3:14), and places a confession on the lips of his people, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is One” (Deut 6:4). While the pagans may worship the many so-called gods, for us, there is one God (1 Cor 8:6). When we refer to the essence of God, we are referring to the “whatness” (in Latin, quiddity). When we say God is one in essence, of course, we do not believe that his “oneness” is a oneness of specialty (as though we worship one among many options, or that there is a genus into which this God fits). Nor do we think that he is one result of a collection of different things to make him what he is (i.e., he is not composite). In terms of Trinitarian theology, we must also say that these Persons are not a divine community, like a gathering of the gods that form some sort of society.

Two: Processions. In God, there are two processions, or “goings forth from.” As we saw at the opening of this article, the Persons are clearly presented in the Scriptures, so our numbers 2, 4, and 5 are largely helping us to say what we can about the three Persons of the Trinity. Since we are speaking here of the Trinity as such, we should be careful not to include merely the missions in which the Son comes from the Father into the world. The mission includes the procession (i.e., it has the “going forth from” as part of its definition), but there is an eternal going forth. The Son is eternally from the Father (which we call generation), and the Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son (which we only call procession).

Three: Properties, or Persons. Because of the two processions, we can identify three Persons, each with distinct properties that identify the Persons in their real distinction. The Father’s property of “paternity,” the Son’s property is “filiation,” and the Spirit’s property is “procession.”

Four: Relations. While there are three Persons, this actually causes us to say there are four relations. These four include the three properties we have already noted. The Father’s relation to the Son is as Father (paternity), and the Son’s relation to the Father is as Son (filiation). The Spirit’s relation to the Father and the Son, is procession, but what is the Father-and-Son’s relation to the Spirit? It can not be as Father, since the Spirit would then be another Son and/or the Son would become another Father. Since Christians have not wanted to say more than we can about the inner life of the Trinity, we have simply applied the language from “Spirit” to the relation: “spiration.” In fact, often, instead of saying both procession and spiration, theologians have simply called it active and passive spiration.

Five: Notions. Of course, we are counting to five, so there must be one last thing to mention, and this is the idea of “notions.” The Reformed theologian Francis Turretin explains that a “‘notion’ designates the same character [as property and relation] inasmuch as it signifies that one person is distinct from another (so as to be the index and mark of distinction between the persons)” (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 1:257). The Father’s relation to the Son is paternity, and that marks him out regarding the Son’s origin, the Son’s origin from the Father is marked out by his filiation, and the spiration and procession marks out the Spirit’s origin from the Father-and-Son (“filioque”). But, though we know the Son is from the Father, how do we mark out the Father’s origin? The Father has no origin, so we simply say he is “unbegotten” (or, to use some additional technical theological terms, he is agennetos or inascible).

While the five points of Trinitarianism, or perhaps the latter four, seem like they are saying a lot, we should not miss the fact that they are actually saying very little. If we could boil the latter four down to a single statement, it is this: the Father is from no one, the Son is eternally from the Father, and the Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son. Many problems in Trinitarian theology today occur because of too much eagerness to jump into saying more than we have been given to say. The reality is that once more begins to be said about the eternal relations as such, theological problems begin to arise, as will be shown in other parts of this series. As dense as the things said above may seem, again, it is actually simply a further explanation of the idea that the Father does not proceed, but the Son is from the Father and the Spirit from the Father and the Son. That said, we are left with some further questions to answer.

Person and Nature

While there were five things mentioned above, we can distinguish them into the two main ideas of the Persons and the essence, or nature. The question that we run into at this point is this: how can it be said that the Persons are three while the nature is one? We begin with humility, acknowledging that we are finite humans who will never comprehend the Trinity.

There are two key affirmations that we make at this point: each of the Persons is God, and the Persons are really distinguished from each other by their relations of origin. Again, these are simple affirmations made by all Christians, but we can move further into our explanation of the affirmations a little bit here.

Each of the Persons is not really distinct from the divine nature with a result that there are four things, the three Persons and the nature. When we say that the Father is God, we mean that he is identical with the divine essence. Likewise, the Son is identical with the divine essence, and so is the Holy Spirit.

Each of the Persons of the Trinity is God, and the Persons are really distinguished from each other by their relations of origin.

However, the Son is really distinct from the Father, and the Spirit is really distinct from the Father and the Son. The Son is not the Father, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son. We would want to say both that the Son is God and that he is from the Father. The way or manner or mode by which he is God is as from the Father. Turretin and others would say that, since the Persons are really distinct from one another, and since this distinction is in their mode of subsisting as God, it is best to refer to the Person-Nature distinction as a real minor distinction or real modal distinction (Institutes 1:279). Or, we might use the words of John Owen, “Every person has distinctly its own substance . . . but each person has not its own distinct substance” (Works [Banner of Truth] 2:409). Each person is truly and distinctly God, but they are not distinct gods. Of course, these are not merely modes of revelation, as the Modalists (Sabellians) would say. They are modes, or ways, of subsisting. This Person is God as the Father, who is from no one, and this Person is God as the one begotten from the Father, and this one is God as the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Again, while many words have been used, we are not pressing beyond our simple confession that there is one God; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is each this one God; that these Persons are really distinct; and that the Father is from none, the Son is from the Father, and the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son. This “doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God, and comfortable dependence on him” (2LBCF 2.3).

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the greatest mystery revealed in Holy Scripture. This is the teaching that there is one God who exists in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is a profound and wonderful mystery. But where do these names come from, and why does each Person have them? Where do we get the names “Father,” and “Son,” and “Holy Spirit?” The answer to these questions lies in the divine processions.

By the term “processions,” theologians mean the eternal “going forth” (Micah 5:2) of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the other divine Persons. The Son is of the Father. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and the Son. These processions reveal profound truths about the divine Persons. The Son of God is not simply the Son because He became man. He was the divine Son from eternity. The Holy Spirit did not begin to be the Spirit of the Father and the Son at creation. He was the Spirit of the Father and the Son from eternity. These names are true of each Person eternally.

The key point that the processions seek to explain is how one divine Person is “from” another. To put it another way, how is God the Son a Son if He never had a beginning? Well, the answer is that He was eternally the Son of God the Father. He never began to be the Son of God the Father, He always was the Son of the Father. The same is true of the Holy Spirit. He was always the Spirit of the Father and the Son. The Son comes from the Father eternally, and the Spirit comes from the Father and the Son eternally. The Father is from no other.

Thus, there are two processions that we see in Scripture: the eternal generation of the Son, and the procession of the Holy Spirit.

First, there is the eternal generation of the Son. When we speak of the eternal generation of the Son, we note that God the Son is “eternally begotten.” This is clearly taught in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (KJV) The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. This means that God the Son is eternally the Son of God the Father. He has never begun to be the Son of the Father. He has always been the Son of the Father. There was no time when God the Son did not exist. And there was no time when God the Son was not the Son of God the Father. He eternally comes from the Father as His Son. As Micah 5:2 states, His “goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”

And so we must understand that God the Son is eternally begotten, revealing the nature and the character of God fully. Just as earthly sons reflect the nature of their fathers, so also does God the Son reflect the divine nature of God the Father from eternity. His Sonship is the eternal going forth and mirroring of the Father’s divine nature.

One aspect of this that is helpful to understand is that the Son always reflects the glory of the Father as an image reflects the glory of the original. We read in Genesis 5:3 that Adam “begat a son in his own likeness, after his image.”  Human sons bear the image of their fathers, reflecting who they are in many ways. But Jesus is called the Image of God (Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Hebrews 1:3). This means that He eternally reflects the glory of God the Father perfectly. There is no time in which He did not reflect the glory of the Father. Nor is there any way that the Son fails to communicate the Father’s divine nature truly and perfectly.   

Just as earthly sons reflect the nature of their fathers, so also does God the Son reflect the divine nature of God the Father from eternity.

So in what sense is Jesus the Son? He is the Son as He eternally comes from the Father, reflecting the fullness of the Father’s divine nature. He is eternally begotten, meaning that He never began to be the Son, but He has always been the Son. He is continually of the Father, reflecting the fullness of His divine nature.

And this is precisely what Scripture teaches. In John 5:26, we read, “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.”  The Lord Jesus is the Source of life even as God the Father is. Moreover, the Son and the Father are one in nature.  “I and my Father are one.” (John 10:30) The Son eternally communicates the character of the Father, full of grace and truth: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) The eternally begotten Son communicates the glory of God in all of its fullness. “The Son…being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his Person.” (Hebrews 1:2,3) Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of God.

But what about the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Thus, when we refer to the way in which the Spirit comes from the Father and the Son, we speak of His eternal procession. This means that He eternally comes from the Father and the Son, without beginning and without end. He has always been the Spirit of the Father and the Son. There was no time when He began to be the Spirit of the Father and the Son. Nor was there any time when He did not exist. He has always been the eternal Spirit of God the Father, and God the Son.

And as the Holy Spirit of God, He reveals the Son and the Father perfectly and truly. He is their Spirit, meaning that He comes from both of them. He is thus able to communicate the fullness of the divine nature perfectly. There is nothing in the Son’s nature that is not in the Spirit. Nor is there anything in the Father’s nature that is not in the Spirit. This is because it is one divine nature which is possessed by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. He does not proceed from the Father alone, but from the Father and the Son. He is the Spirit of Jesus just as much as He is the Spirit of the Father. This means that He is capable of communicating the presence of Christ to us.

The Holy Spirit is able to communicate the fullness of the divine nature perfectly.

And this is exactly what we see in Scripture. The Lord Jesus states, “But when the Comforter is comes, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:” (John 15:26) Jesus sends the Spirit, who proceeds from Him and from the Father. Likewise, He states that the Spirit glorifies Him. “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.” (John 16:13-14) The Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son.

As this is true of the Son and the Spirit, the question may be asked, what about God the Father? Does He have a procession as well? And the answer is no. God the Father is unbegotten, and unproceeding. He eternally begets the Son. And the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son eternally. He possesses no procession of His own and is not from another in the way that the Son and the Holy Spirit are.

Why are the divine processions so important? The processions are important because they reveal who the divine Persons are. God the Son is not merely the Son because of a title or a name. He is the Son because He is begotten of the Father from eternity past. This is who He is. Likewise, God the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit because He eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. This goes to the heart of who God the Trinity is. This is why it is so important.

But along with this, the processions teach that there is not a “greater” or a “lesser” among the divine Persons. They each possess the one divine nature from eternity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all truly and fully God. As the Athanasian Creed expresses so well, “in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal.” They are each of them truly and fully divine. And yet, as the Athanasian Creed also notes, “the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty.”

We serve one true and living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He has always been Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the glorious Triune Lord whom we will have the privilege of praising for eternity.

When you look up at the starlit sky and ponder the vastness and beauty of the heavens above and the diversity and unity of the earth below, your thoughts are moved to the God who created such marvelous things. If the universe is so unfathomably expansive and so indescribably beautiful, what is the nature of the God who created it? What is God like, the one who exceeds the greatness and grandeur of the world we inhabit? When we begin to ask these questions, we quickly acknowledge that we are finite creatures contemplating the infinite God. Though we are finite creatures, the one true and infinite God has revealed himself to us in the world he has made and even more clearly in the word he has caused to be written. World and word together (natural and supernatural theology) teach the glory and majesty of our God.

Simplicity

God has revealed himself to his creatures as the God who is simple. At first glance, to say that God is simple sounds counterintuitive. The great and glorious God is simple? The Creator of the complexity of the cosmos is simple? Yes, because by the simplicity of God we mean that there is no composition in God. God is not made up of parts, or any form of composition whatsoever. God’s simplicity is fundamental to a true understanding of him.

We gather divine simplicity from Scripture, in three principal places. The first is God’s self-revelation of his most sacred name, “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14). God reveals his name as the one who is. He is his own existence. God is being itself subsisting. The one who is, who is his own being, indeed who is pure being itself subsisting, cannot possibly be a composite being. Therefore, we say he is simple. God is pure simple being itself.

World and word together teach the glory and majesty of our God.

The second is Jesus’ statement that “God is spirit” (John 4:24). Angels are spirits, but they are created spirits. They are composed of the possibility to be, and God making them to be. God is spirit, but not like the angels. He is not a being that has been brought into being. God is pure simple being itself.

The third is Paul’s doxology, “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36). For all things to be from, through, and to God, there can be nothing before God. But all things composed have a composer. All things with parts have been put together. If all things are from, through, and to God, he must be pure simple being itself, without any composition or cause preceding his being. God cannot be reduced to more fundamental parts. Because his is not composed, he cannot be decomposed. God is pure simple being itself.

If one were to respond that God’s being is “necessarily composite,” or that God is “necessary complexity,” but without a composer, not only is this a self-contradicting proposal when investigated, but also it would follow that there may be necessarily composite beings other than the one we know as God. Divine simplicity protects the uniqueness and singularity of God because he, and he alone, is pure being itself. The one who is, pure and simple being, gives existence to all things. From the infinite fullness of his perfect simple being, God has given them that most fundamental of compositions, to be brought from possibility of being into actual being and made “according to their kind.”

Analogy

God’s simplicity reminds us, once more, of the vast and inviolable distinction between the Creator and his creatures. We must confess that our words and thoughts of God fall short of reaching the height or finding the depth of his majesty.

Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? (Job 11:7)

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it (Psalm 139:6).

How can we speak of such a sublime God? As we form our understanding and speech of God from both the world and the word, we must do so in a way that keeps the infinity of God and the finitude of creatures in place. We must think and speak of God in a way that is fitting with his infinite being as God, and to think and speak of creatures in a way that is fitting with their finite being as creatures. When we do this, we are using analogy or analogical speech. In this context, to use analogy, or analogical speech, is to attribute something to God according to his being, and the same thing to man (if at all fitting) according to his being.

So, for example, to speak analogically is to say, “God is good,” and, “John is good,” but to understand that because of divine simplicity God is the goodness by which he is good, whereas John is good only insofar as he reflects God’s goodness. The difference between goodness in God and John is not merely one of quantity (more or less), but of being itself. God’s goodness is his own simple being—essential, infinite, eternal, immutable, and perfect. John’s goodness is a quality, something extrinsic to himself in which he participates proportional to his being, capable of increase or decrease. To speak of goodness according to God’s being, and according to man’s being is to use analogy.

We must think and speak of God in a way that is fitting with his infinite being as God, and to think and speak of creatures in a way that is fitting with their finite being as creatures.

To give another example, consider the difference between fire, and being fired up, or between heat and being heated up. It is of the nature of fire to be hot. Other things can receive heat from fire, but when the source of heat is removed, they lose that heat. When I eat lunch, I sit under a pergola with a metal roof. The roof heats with the midday sun, creaking as its temperature rises, but when a cloud covers the sun the roof immediately begins to creak oppositely as it cools down. It is not of the nature of metal roofs to be hot, so it heats and cools insofar as it participates in the heat of the sun. We attribute heat to fire, or to the sun, in a way that fits the nature of the thing, and so also with metal roofs, or anything that is heated or fired. For one, it is the nature of the thing to be hot. For another, it only participates in heat, or becomes hot, as it is exposed to that which is heat.

This example may be illustrative, but it falls short because the sun, so scientists say, will eventually burn out, and fires can be extinguished. The sun can increase or decrease in a number of ways, as can fire, but God is all that he is infinitely, eternally, perfectly, and immutably, like a celestial flame that is an infinite fuel unto itself. Despite the shortcomings of the example, it illustrates the point that in all our thoughts of God, we must think analogically, that is, according to the being of the thing of which we are speaking. Though we speak of God in the language of men, we must do so in a way that acknowledges and preserves his being as God.

This applies to how we read the Bible. God condescends to speak to us in human language in the written word, and we must recognize this to be an accommodation to our capacities as creatures. We must read the Bible in a way that keeps God’s infinite being in mind. So, for example, the idea of “regret” or “repentance” is inconsistent with the perfection and immutability of God, and yet the Bible attributes these to God in various places. At the same time, the Bible denies that God regrets or repents.

God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind (Numbers 23:19).

The Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret (1 Samuel 15:29).

What is the solution to these apparently opposite statements? It is analogy, which God himself teaches us when his word says, “God is not man.” This means that repentance must be attributed to God in some way that is fitting with his being as God. This we can do, by recognizing that the God who decreed all things immutably, whatsoever comes to pass, decreed to make Saul king, to permit his demise, and to remove and replace him with David. All of this was decreed by the unchanging eternal God, without remorse, regret, or a change of mind. However, from the human perspective it appears as a complete reversal of plan and action, which is precisely what repentance is.

Repentance is borrowed from human speech to communicate the providential reversal of events within God’s unfolding plan, and therefore when we attribute it to God we must remember that God is not a man. If we forget this, we will bring God down to the level of the human language he has used to communicate with us. The point to be grasped is that the world and word teach us of the greatness of God, and we must think and speak of him analogically, that is, in a way that is fitting with his being.

The One Who Is, the great I AM,

Exceeds the meager mind of man.

As creatures, all we say or know

Of God above comes from below,

Because the things that he has made

With his own likeness are inlaid.

Behind our thoughts, Beyond our reach,

God, in kindness, speaks our speech.

But he remains transcendent still.

He always has, and always will.

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,

uttered or unexpressed;

The motion of a hidden fire

that trembles in the breast.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,

the falling of a tear,

The upward glancing of an eye,

when none but God is near.

Prayer is the simplest form of speech

that infant lips can try,

Prayer the sublimest strains that reach

the Majesty on high.

Prayer is the contrite sinner’s voice,

returning from His ways;

While angels in their songs rejoice

and cry, “Behold, he prays!”

Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath,

the Christian’s native air,

His watchword at the gates of death;

he enters heav’n with prayer.

Nor prayer is made on earth alone,

the Holy Spirit pleads;

And Jesus at the Father’s throne

for sinners intercedes.

The saints in prayer appear as one,

in word and deed and mind;

while with the Father and the Son

sweet fellowship they find.

Nor prayer is made on earth alone:

the Holy Spirit pleads,

and Jesus on the eternal throne,

for sinners intercedes.

O Thou by whom we come to God,

The Life, the Truth, the Way;

The path of prayer Thyself hast trod:

Lord, teach us how to pray!

James Montgomery (1771-1854)

Thanks to our newly minted Vice President, JD Vance, the phrase ordo amoris is in the news and all-over social media. For this, I am grateful. The VP has been making the point that America has a responsibility to its citizens before it has a responsibility to the citizens of any other nation. Therefore, it is not outside the bounds of love or justice to deport illegal immigrants.

Vice President Vance clarified on X that this comes from the ancient Christian idea of the ordo amoris, order of loves. The idea is that we should love some things more than we love other things and that we should love some people more than we love other people. This isn’t bigotry, it isn’t racism, it isn’t white ethno-nationalism, it is classical Christianity.

What Should We Love?

Christians ought to love everything that exists. 1 Timothy 4:4 says, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” God has created everything that exists (sin and wickedness do not have their own existence but are rather privations of what is good). If this were not so, then there would be more than one God, but scripture and nature prohibit us from believing such an absurdity. Since all things are made by God, and since all things made by God are good, then Christians have an obligation to love all things, in their proper order. I ought to love my computer, I ought to love the oak tree in my backyard, and I ought to love my daughter, but not in that order.

Some Things Should Be Loved More Than Other Things

Though we should love all things that exist, we ought not love all things equally. Rather, we ought to love things in accordance with their nature. How great is a thing? That is precisely how much you ought to love it. The greater a thing is, the more beautiful a thing is, the more worthy a thing is, the more it ought to be loved. This goes for mundane things like water bottles and seat belts, and it goes for exceptional things like people and virtues. Our loves must be commensurate with the nature of the thing loved.

There’s a really important point here that we can’t miss. We don’t get to choose the nature of things. Only the Creator does. So, we don’t get to choose how much a thing ought to be loved. God does that. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, it is determined by God, who is the Creator of all and who is Beauty itself. Some things are inherently more lovely than other things and it is our duty, as God’s creatures, to bring our loves and desires into alignment with that objective reality.

Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, it is determined by God, who is the Creator of all and who is Beauty itself.

I may really love boxed mac n’ cheese (I don’t). Perhaps it conjures pleasant memories of childhood. Perhaps my tastes have been trained by the regular consumption of said mac. But my love for it ought not exceed the love it should receive according to its nature. I ought not prefer boxed mac n’ cheese to a medium rare rib eye steak. Why? Because the nature of the rib eye steak demands greater love. Indeed, the man who has trained his loves to desire the steak more than the mac gets greater enjoyment from the steak than the man who loves the mac more gets enjoyment from his overly processed meal. The more you give your love to greater things, the more you are satisfied.

Or perhaps, to bring it a little closer to home. I may really love my pets (as I ought). But my love for my pets should not exceed that which the nature of those pets deserves. One ought not love their ‘fur babies’ as much or more than one loves his children or his grandchildren, or anybody else’s children for that matter. Because the nature of a child is far greater than the nature of a dog. If I love my pets and my children in accordance with their respective natures, I will get far more enjoyment from my children than my Chameleon.

This rhymes with what Aristotle says about the aim of education. The purpose of education is to get the student to associate pain with bad things and pleasure with good things. In education, our duty is to help the student love what he ought to love in the degree that he ought to love it. This does not come natural to us in our fallen state, but it can be learned and trained and given by the grace of God.

What Ought to Be Loved Most?

The obvious answer to the obvious question is God, as it often is. God must be loved most. Matt. 22:37-39 says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” God is the only being we cannot love too much. We are to love things insofar as their nature demands, God’s nature is infinite, and thus demands infinite love, which we do not have to give. But so much as we do have, we give. When, by the Spirit, we make God the highest of our loves, our hierarchy of love begins to fall in place. After God I must love those made in His image, my fellow man. But so long as God is not my greatest desire, my desire for everything else will be misplaced and misshapen. I will not get enjoyment and satisfaction out of life as I ought because God is not my greatest love.

This is a transformative thought. The more I love God, the more enjoyment I will receive. Not just from Him, but also from all the things He has made. Because everything He has made reflects His goodness, beauty, and majesty in some way or another. When our love for God is not greater than everything He has made, our disordered loves make us miserable. We are not satisfied to the degree we ought to be in the things we love because we love them too much or too little. The Bible calls these disordered loves idolatry. And the end of idolatry is always misery.

The Nature of Sin is Disordered Love

All sin finds its genesis in disordered love. Our desire for some things are greater than they ought to be, or less than they should be. An excessive love for rest leads to sloth and indolence. A deficient love for truth leads to deception. An excessive love for food leads to gluttony. A deficient love for man leads to murder. As Augustine says, “When the miser loves gold more than justice, he does not reveal a fault in the gold, but in the himself.” And this all flows from our lack of love for God. Furthermore, virtue is found in the proper ordering of our loves. Again Augustine, “It is a brief but true definition of virtue to say it is the order of love.” Either we will love God first, or we will be idolatrous. Either we will be virtuous, or we will be miserable.

We Should Love Some People More Than Others

We ought to love man in accordance with his nature. But ought we love some men more than others? In one sense yes, in another sense no.

No, we ought not love some men more than others because all men share a common nature, human nature. No man’s nature is superior to another’s because the essence of who we are is the imago dei. No one has more of it than anyone else. If our love is to be commensurate to the nature of a thing, then our love for man must be equal since we have the same nature. A denial of this truth has led to all manner of bigotry, racism, and abuse.

When our love for God is not greater than everything He has made, our disordered loves make us miserable.

However, in another sense our love for all people ought not be equal. Not because men’s natures are different, but because the nature of our relationships is different. My wife is not greater by nature than anyone else, yet I am still obligated to love her more than I love any other human being because the nature of my relationship to her is greater than the nature of my relationship to anyone else. She is my wife. Ephesians 5:25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” The scriptures demand of me a greater love for my wife than for any other human being.’

Furthermore, I should love those in my immediate family more than I love anyone outside of it. 1 Timothy 5:8 says, “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” I have a greater responsibility to my family than to anyone else. More than that, I have a greater responsibility to my own household than to my extended family. This is the proper ordering of loves.

I am commanded to honor my own father and mother. This does not negate the necessity of honoring other fathers and mothers, but I have a priority to my own first. Then to my grandparents, then to my great grandparents and my ancestors before them. In fact, I ought to love and honor my own ancestors more than I love and honor the ancestors of other people. I ought to love and honor my own cultural heritage (insofar as it is good) which my ancestors have given me than I love the cultural heritage of others.

In like manner, I am to have a greater love for my own children than I do for the children of my neighbors. I am commanded to love the children of my neighbors, but I am commanded to love them less than my own children. In the same way I have a greater responsibility to my grandchildren than my neighbor’s grandchildren, and to my great-grandchildren, and to all my future descendants. The proper order of loves in the family sphere helps us to understand the nature of love on the communal and national level. Bavinck says it like this, “The one relationship of family is terminal and is the type of all the others. From the household family and its relationships stem all the other relationships in variegated complexity.”

Who is My Neighbor?

In Matthew 22 Jesus makes it clear that love must be given to God first, then to our neighbors. But the question the rich lawyer asks is the same many of us might ask, ‘who is my neighbor?’ Jesus proceeds to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan. For the Good Samaritan, his neighbor was a man at his feet who was from a different nation, different family, and different religion than he, yet he loved him anyway and manifested that love in acts of mercy and service.

The proper order of loves in the family sphere helps us to understand the nature of love on the communal and national level.

Jesus is making it clear that all men are our neighbors, and we ought to love them all. However, the Good Samaritan had the means to help the wounded man because they were in the same locale. We have a greater responsibility to love our closest neighbors first, not because they are better than other people, but because we have a greater capacity to do them good than we do people who are far away.

Augustine says,

All men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.

I can love my next-door neighbor far better than a man in Mumbai who is equally deserving of my love. Therefore, I have an obligation to my next-door neighbor first. John Calvin echoes Augustine when commenting on Matthew 22 he says,

Now since Christ hath demonstrated in the parable of the Samaritan, that the word “neighbour” comprehends every man, even the greatest stranger, we have no reason to limit the commandment of love to our own relations or friends. I do not deny, that the more closely any person is united to us, the greater claim he has to the assistance of our kind offices. For the condition of humanity requires, that men should perform more acts of kindness to each other, in proportion to the closeness of the bonds by which they are connected, whether of relationship, or acquaintance, or vicinity; and this without any offence to God, by whose providence we are constrained to it.

In the proper ordo amoris, I must first consider my family, then my neighbors in my community, then those in my city, county, state, nation, then those around the globe. More love for one person than another person is not hatred nor bigotry. It is proper according to nature.

The Ordo Amoris and Immigration

What does all this have to do with immigration? The Vice President’s point is this. Yes, it will be hard for illegal immigrants to be deported. Yes, it will be hard on the countries to which they are returning. But the rulers of this nation, and the citizens of this nation, have a moral duty to their fellow citizens before they have an obligation to the citizens of other nations who have taken up residency here. We ought to love illegal immigrants and care for them as we can, but not to the demise of our families, communities, cities or fellow citizens. Love for the homeless man who is down on his luck does not require that you give him a key to your home. This especially when your home is in disarray, disrepair, debt, and disaster.

Our nation is currently in disarray, disrepair, debt, and disaster. We ought to love those outside our nation, but not at the expense of our nation. We need first to get our own house in order, from there we will be in a position to help those outside who need it.

The Household of Faith

Our love for the household of faith ought to supersede our love to those outside the faith. Our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ ought to outstrip our love for our brothers and sisters by blood. Galatians 6:10 says, “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” Everyone should receive our love, but especially those of the household of faith.

We ought to love illegal immigrants and care for them as we can, but not to the demise of our families, communities, cities or fellow citizens.

This does not undo our responsibility to family or nation. We do not seek to do harm to our family or our nation for the sake of those in the church. The church ought not advocate that all Christians of other nations be given automatic citizenship. Just as we ought not give a key to our house to every person who calls himself a Christian. Even so, our love and loyalty ought to be for the Church first and foremost, to the people that Christ loved the most, then to others after them.

God has made everything good, and everything good must be loved by His people. But not equally. Our love for things must be commensurate with the nature of those things. Our fallen intellects blind us to the true nature of things, our deficient loves lead us to hate those whom we should love. But in His grace, God has granted us His Spirit, and He will give us wisdom when we ask for it. Wisdom to see the true nature of things, and grace to love them the way we ought. And as the Spirit makes us wise and virtuous, He will also reorder our loves to what they were intended to be.