It seems to me that part of the problem is the idea of Jesus being "fully man" and "fully God" simultaneously. But I think some of this is stuff that has come up AFTER Jesus. For example, the Ebionite Christians of the 2nd Century said that Jesus was man, but not God, but the Docetist Christians (same era) said Jesus was fully God, but not a man at all (since, by their thinking, God couldn't be debaucherized by entering a sinful world.. so Jesus was kind of like a hologram, in today's terms).. and so to stick these together, they made Jesus "fully God, and fully man".. and that's where this confusion comes from.
That Jesus has two natures – fully God and fully man – is the orthodox teaching of the New Testament. See the following for biblical support:
Yes, this was as much an issue in the early church as it is today. It was debated at the
First Council of Ephesus in 431 and the Nestorian position was found to be unorthodox and his teachings were condemned as heresy.
Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, may not have taught this doctrine himself, but Nestorianism, associated with his name, believed the error that Jesus was two distinct persons, one human and one divine. This doctrine threatens the nature of the atonement. Harold O. J. Brown stated that "Nestorius' incarnate person was a single person, not two as his critics thought, but he could not convince others that it was so. Consequently he has gone down in history as a great heretic although what he actually believed was reaffirmed at [the Council of] Chalcedon" (
Heresies, p. 176).
The Scriptures do not indicate the human nature of Christ as an independent person. We don't find in the Bible any teaching such as: "Jesus' divine nature did this" and "Jesus' human nature did that" as if they were acting as two separate persons. The NT teaching always speaks of the PERSON of Christ did this or that.
So, the orthodox position is that Jesus was one person who possessed both a human nature and a divine nature.
We can talk of Christ's human nature, where he ascended to heaven and is no longer in our world (see John 16:28; 17:11; Acts 1:9-11). When speaking of Christ's divine nature we can say that he is present everywhere: "Where two or three are gathered in my name THERE AM I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20); "I am with you always to the close of the age" (Matt. 28:20).
So we can say that both of these things are true about the PERSON of Christ - he has returned to heaven AND he is also present with us.
We can say that Jesus was about 30 years old (Luke 3:23) if we speak of his human nature, but when speaking of his divine nature, we can say that he eternally existed (see John 1:1-2; 8:58). In his human nature, Jesus became weak and grew tired (see Matt. 4:2; 8:24; Mark 15:21; John 4:6), but we know that in his divine nature, he was omnipotent (Matt. 8:26-27; Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3. Therefore, we know that he was omnipotent, but he grew tired.
We see these two natures at work in the situation where Jesus was asleep in the boat and then calmed the wind and the waves (Matt. 8:26-27). It is amazing that this one person was both tired and omnipotent. At time his weak human frailty hid his omnipotence. But we must never lose sight of the fact that Jesus was one person with both human and divine natures.
I find that the only way I can get my head around this teaching that opposes Nestorianism, is to read the Scriptures. Jesus was truly and fully God and truly and fully human - both natures in the one person.
Oz