What Is Partitive Exegesis?
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.
“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.
- 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).
- When Jesus said, “I thirst,” the person is the subject, but thirst is only appropriate for the human nature (John 19:28).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?”
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We Need Gospel Clarity
A life that seems to have no interest in Christ and his church nor pays any heed to his commands is not a living, active faith promoted from within by the Holy Spirit. It is a non-existent faith. It is belief that some words you said years ago is good enough to deal with your sin once and for all and to secure a place in Heaven for you. I’m afraid that isn’t a teaching you will find anywhere in the Bible. Apart from ongoing, active faith in Christ there is no salvation and telling people otherwise is not loving them, it is actively encouraging them on their way to a lost eternity.
I have lost count of the number of times I have heard a story approximating the following. Somebody has grown up going to church, hearing the gospel and made a profession of faith or prayed the sinners prayer. They apparently go on with the Lord for a bit until, eventually, drifting away from the church and Christ. If pressed, they might still say they believe, but there is absolutely nothing about their lifestyle that gives any indication that this is any more than mere words. For many, there isn’t even a claim to love Jesus.
This sort of story does the rounds and few Christians wouldn’t be able to tell you of one they know about. But I have also noticed, with troubling frequency, how many people under those circumstances still want to insist that person is a believer and belongs to the Lord. There is no sign of fruit, no evidence of belief and often no understanding of the gospel. But nonetheless, we still hear that the Lord still has them, for some reason. This concerns me deeply for two reasons.
First, it doesn’t do anything to help those people come to Christ. If we continue to affirm that somebody is a believer who has clearly departed from the faith, we are doing nothing other than comfort that person all the way to perdition. In all honesty, I cannot wrap my head around why you would want that for your family and friends. Why would you want them to go on in the false belief that they’re alright as they are by telling them the profession they made years before – despite every evidence to the contrary that it ultimately wasn’t genuine – are somehow still believers?
If we claim to love our family and friends, we surely can’t be content with affirming them in beliefs that are actively damaging to them. They don’t need our reassurance that they’re safe in the Lord; they need the gospel. They need to hear that they aren’t okay and, if they carry on as they are, they will remain outside of Christ and face all the disastrous consequences of being so. To comfort somebody as a believer, to affirm faith that clearly doesn’t exist, does them no favour at all. It is actually damaging the very people we claim to love.
I have heard similar things said to comfort believing parents regarding their unbelieving children. But again, it might feel nice to tell people that the Lord still has their children, but we don’t actually help them or their children by pretending it is so. Instead, helping people see the reality of the situation – that without ongoing, active faith in Christ there is no salvation and that is effected by the Holy Spirit, who is obviously absent in the heart of someone who has no concern for holiness – means they can continue to hold out the gospel clearly to those who need to hear it.
I appreciate with family and friends it is not always the easiest thing to do. Especially if the gospel is considered to be something we have heard hundreds of times before and have no interest in it.
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Grace, Grace, All the Way Down
The sum of our complaints is neatly captured in God’s challenge to Job: “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.” Here then is what all our murmuring amounts to: not justified expressions of displeasure, but rank rebellion against the King of heaven; clay daring to find fault with the Potter.
And the LORD said to Job: “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.’”Job 40:1-2
One antidote against a bitter, complaining spirit is to remember the very obvious truth that you are not God.
What you are is a creature made in the image of God. But He is the eternal Creator and sovereign ruler of all things in heaven and earth. To put things in focus, before you ever existed—before matter arranged itself by divine decree into an embryonic conglomerate of cells and tissues joined to an eternal soul—God was speaking worlds into existence. He was commanding the rise and fall of empires. He was fashioning such creatures as the hippo and crocodile, the common house fly and the Japanese murder hornet. He was setting the bounds of created reality, speaking stars and galaxies into existence that no human eye would ever see, and delighting in the divine joke that would one day be the ostrich.
All these God created and upholds by the power of His Word. But we’re upset that the light turned red. Or that the toothpaste is empty again. Or that the gas light is on and we’re already running late. To put not too fine a point on it, each day a veritable tsunami of blessing goes forth from the throne of the triune God, and each day a near ceaseless drone of nitpicking ascends in return. Like Israel grumbling in the wilderness, shockingly blind to God’s goodness and provision, so are we on a normal Tuesday afternoon. We really are stunningly audacious creatures.
The sum of our complaints, however, is neatly captured in God’s challenge to Job: “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.” Here then is what all our murmuring amounts to: not justified expressions of displeasure, but rank rebellion against the King of heaven; clay daring to find fault with the Potter.
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How the Transgender Movement Fuels Conspiracy Theories
No matter how far-fetched a given conspiracy theory might seem, it will not be as far-fetched as the idea that there are now 72 genders. In fact, considering which narratives the progressive establishment defends most fiercely, it seems to many that the only truly credulous position to take would be that of leaders who cannot even define what a woman or a man is, who reject established science on issues of ideology, and gaslight us when we try to point that out.
Ask anyone in your life to define a ‘conspiracy theory,’ and you’ll likely get a different answer. From elections to vaccines, from the ‘deep state’ to Ukraine, there is only one thing that most people now agree on: that establishment narratives are false. There are a range of key contributing factors to this—the internet and social media, the collapse of trust in institutions, increasing polarization, and much more. But one prominent issue that has proven to be a catalyst for all these trends has been largely ignored: the rise of the transgender movement.
What do I mean by a ‘catalyst’? A catalyst is “an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action.” Thus, the change is already occurring, but the catalyst accelerates it. The transgender agenda, which has been imposed from the top down by the establishment in just a few short years—government, the press, the entertainment industry, academia, and activists—has radically increased distrust in institutions and increased polarization by destroying the common ground where compromise has traditionally been possible. If we can’t even agree on basic biology, what can we agree on?
Progressives seem oddly blind to the effect their radicalism on this issue has on ordinary people. Police bulletins featuring photos of bearded male rapists identifying them as ‘women’; men identifying as women being sent to female prisons; males with all of the male equipment (‘her penis’) competing against girls in sports; sex change ‘treatments’ for minors; and the never-ending insistence that all of this is normal, that nothing has changed, and that we are bigoted for pointing out that this is all very new and even those of us in our early thirties remember when it was different—all of this has a profoundly radicalizing effect in turn.
The reply from the progressive establishment has been censorship, demonization, and a threatening question: Who are you going to believe—us or your lying eyes? When average people in possession of common sense see the experts and elites aggressively pushing absurd things, most reach one of two conclusions.
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