Componentes del Área a) Expresión Vocal y Canto

textual meaning that indicates the bodily virginity of Mary, who then became the mother of our Lord Jesus.

THE UNION The Lord

The union is the description of the unity of the JesusChrist

divine and human natures in Jesus’ one Person. An adequate understanding of this doctrine is dependent on a complete understanding of each of the two natures and how they con- stitute the one Peison.

The teaching of Scripture about the humanity of Jesus shows us that in the Incarnation He became fully human in every area of life except the actual commission of any sin.

One of the ways we know the completeness of Jesus’ hu- manity is that the same terms that describe aspects of humanity also describe Him. For example, the New Tes- tament often uses the Greek word

pneuma,

“spirit,” to de- scribe the spirit of man; this word is also used of Jesus. And Jesus used it of himself, as on the cross He committed His

spirit to His Father and breathed His last breath (Luke

Contextually, the word “spirit” (Gk.

pneumu)

must mean the aspect of human existence that goes on in eternity after death. This point is quite important because it is as a human being that Jesus died. As God the Son, He lives eternally with the Father. In Jesus’ experience of death we see one of the most powerful attestations to the completeness of His manity. He was so human that He died a criminal’s death.

The Incarnate Jesus also had a human soul. He used the Greek to describe the workings of His inner self and emotions in Matthew

Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here

and keep watch with me.”

Jesus was capable of the depths of human emotion. As we see in the Gospels, He felt pain, sorrow, joy, and hope. This was true because He shared with us the reality of being human souls.

Finally, Jesus had a human body just like ours. Blood ran through His veins as His heart pumped to sustain His human life in His body. This is clearly indicated in Hebrews

3

Systematic Theology: A Pentecostal Perspective

Systematic Considerations in Christology

3 17

CHAPTER 18. In this powerful passage, Jesus’ bodily existence on earth is said to provide the very possibility for our atonement. The Lord Because He was flesh and blood, His death could defeat death_{and bring us to God. Jesus’ body64 in the Incarnation was just}

like our bodies. His human body was placed in a tomb after His death (Mark

Another witness to the completeness of Jesus’ humanity is His participation in ordinary human weakness. Although He was God, He humbled himself, taking on human form. In John

we the simple fact that Jesus became weary, as anyone would who traveled a long distance on foot. It is clear from Matthew that Jesus was capable of hunger in the normal human way. “After fasting forty days and forty nights, he

hungry.” Jesus also clearly expressed a limitation of His

knowledge. Speaking of the time of the Second Coming in Mark He says, ‘No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven,

the

but only the Father.’ Certainly this limitation was allowed by himself un- der the conditions of the Incarnation, but it was a human limitation nevertheless.

The cumulative weight of these Scripture passages should cause us to conclude that Jesus was fully human. He was just like us in every respect but sin. His lowering of himself to servanthood as a man made it possible for Jesus redeem us from sin and the curse of the Law.

The New Testament writers attribute deity to Jesus in sev- eral important passages. In John 1: 1, Jesus as the Word existed as God himself. It is hard to imagine a clearer assertion of Jesus’ deity. It is based on the language of Genesis and places Jesus in the eternal order of existence with the Father. In John we have another powerful witness to Jesus’ deity. Jesus is asserting of himself continuous existence, like that of the Father. “I AM” is the well-known self-revelation of

God to Moses at the burning bush (Exod. In saying “I am,” Jesus was making available the knowledge of His deity to those who would believe.

Paul also gives us a clear witness to the deity of Jesus: ‘Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being

in

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human

a body of bone, blood, muscles, etc.

likeness” (Phil. The Greek uses very strong language CHAPTER here. The participle is stronger than

eimi

and is

a forceful statement of Christ’s state of existence. The state-

ment en (v. should be The Lord

rendered “who, existing in the form of God.” The statement Jesus

einai

(v.

should be rendered “to be equal with Christ

God.” The meaning Paul conveys here is that Jesus was in a

state of existence in equality with God. However, He did not or cling, to this state, but rather released it and became a servant, dying on the cross for us.

When we use all the data of the New Testament on this subject, we realize that Jesus did not stop being God during the Incarnation. Rather, He gave up the independent exercise of the divine He was still fully Deity in His very being, but He what seems to have been a condition of the Incarnation, that His human limitations were real, not In spite of these clear scriptural assertions of Jesus’ deity, modern antisupernatural, critical scholarship has been very reluctant to accept the canonical view of Jesus’ deity. Some scholars have claimed to detect a development of Christology in Early Church history, with the deity of the incarnational view standing at the end of a process of apostolic and churchly reflection on Jesus rather than at the beginning and all the way through.

John Knox’s view is representative of a position held by some that Christology moved from a primitive adoptionism to kenoticism to Primitive adoptionism means that Jesus was taken up to be Son by the Father, without any considerations of preexistence or emptying of

Kenoticism means, as Paul teaches in Philippians 2, that Jesus emptied himself of His heavenly glory for the purposes of

salvation, not The purported third

stage of the development is incarnationalism, where the preexistent Son becomes a man by taking on human

771.

Knox, Humanity and of A Study of Pattern in (London: Cambridge Univ. Press,

position is set forth by fn l-l 1, kenosis teaching is explained thoroughly by Donald

of a A Analysis of (Philadelphia: Westminster,

view of as historically defensible is presented by Erickson,

Systematic Theology: A Pentecostal Perspective

CHAPTER

C. F. D. Moule says, however, that incarnationalism is ent throughout the New Testament, and that Jesus

The His deity by humbling By saying this, Moule reduces Jesus the sharpness of the concepts drawn by Knox and others. But Christ it seems appropriate in light of the Synoptic Gospels to _{serve that Jesus’ deity is present in}

_the

_{of the New} Testament, though it is most pronounced in Paul’s and John’s writings.

Clearly, the Bible presents ample evidence of the scriptural affirmations of both Jesus’ humanity and deity. It now remains to be established how these two natures can be together in one Person.

The Council of Chalcedon, which convened in A.D.

451,

is

usually viewed as a moment in the history of Chris- Standing at the culmination of a long line of Chris- tological heresies the council defined the orthodox faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as being focused on His two natures, divine and human, united in His one person.

The Council of Chalcedon has a historical context. The separation of the natures advanced by Nestorius had been repudiated by the Council of in A.D.

431. The

blend-

ing of the two natures proposed by Eutyches came to be refuted by Chalcedon itself. In this climate of theological controversy, two writings had profound influence over the outcome of Chalcedon. The first was Cyril’s letter to John of Antioch, which says:

Therefore we confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, is complete God and complete human being with a rational soul and a body. He was born from the Father before the ages, as to his deity, but at the end of the days the same one was born, for our sake and the sake of our salvation, from Mary the Virgin, as to his humanity. This same one is coessential with the Father, as to his deity, and coessential with us, as to his humanity, for a union of two natures has occurred, as a consequence of which we confess one Christ, one one

The contribution of this statement to orthodox Christology is the concept that two complete natures were united in the

F. D. Moule, “The Manhood of Jesus in the New Testament,” Faith, and History Cambridge Studies in S. W. Sykes and J. P. Clayton, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 10.

A. Norris, Jr., trans. and ed.,

(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980) 141-42.

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