I wrote, "the Son / Word of God was begotten before all ages," which is a direct quotation from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed:
"And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God,
begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father through Whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man."
Most definitely, I uphold
no Nestorian doctrine and it is quite inaccurate to accuse me of such. I believe that God himself died on the cross since the Lord Jesus Christ has only one hypostasis and agree with everything in
post #64.
OTOH, I disagree with Miaphysitism that you seem to consider an alternative Orthodox expression. But this is another discussion for another day
.
Just to be clear, I am not accusing you of Nestorianism and that was never my intention, and I should have made that more clear, and I apologize if I came across as offensive.” It is also evident that you adhere to a completely orthodox Christology, which I expected, because the Anglican Communion has historically been known for doing a particularly good job when it comes to teaching Christology.
And your Theopaschite Christology, in saying God died on the cross, I believe absolutely.
Now, begging your pardon, I do believe you made a minor error in saying “Jesus is a created being” even though you very correctly said the Word was uncreated, quoting the Creed, and you very evidently believe in the Apostolic faith in terms of Christology, and given that you are comfortable saying God died on the Cross, which is what I would say, I believe we share the same Christology.
The minor technical error I was referring to, I will explain in purely Chalcedonian terminology since you are uncomfortable with Miaphysitism, which shows that you have a zeal for Christological truth.
Specifically, the doctrine of Chalcedon is that when Christ became man, he did so without change. There is no change, confusion or separation between the divine nature and the human nature which exist in hypostatic union.
So the technical error was this - in saying Jesus is a created being, your words suggest that the hypostatic union results in something new, which imparts change onto the person of the Word, and that the being of Jesus Christ and the Word of God are not identical, which is contradictory to your belief in both Chalcedonian hypostatic union and Theopaschitism.
What I think would have been clearer and more accurate would have been if you had said “The human nature of Jesus is created and without change He put it on.”
Do you get what I am saying? Because I want to reiterate: you have made it clear that you are Christologically in agreement with Chalcedon and that your Christology is extremely correct; indeed it is more accurate and more orthodox than that of Emperor Justinian, who despite being responsible for incorporating the Theopaschite hymn Ho Monogenes in the Byzantine Rite liturgy, later in life took a stand that made him very clearly not a Theopaschite but an Apthartodocetist. Apthartodocetism is technically allowed under Chalcedon, but Theopaschitism was the preferred and prevailing expression, and I appreciate and admire your Theopaschite belief.
Also, I would note that under the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, any of the Christological positions of the fifth and sixth century controversies are verbally compatible with it, including Nestorianism, Monophysitism and Monothelitism, with the exception of the Tritheism of John Philoponus, and other sixth century descendants of the Eutychians.
So I hope that clears things up. I agree with your Christology almost exactly or exactly, I simply think that when you said Jesus was a created being, this was technically an undesirable way of expressing the fact that His human nature is created; the uncreated put on the created to save creation. It also violates the principle of Communicatio Idiomatum, which as a Theopaschite, becomes even more important, because since you agree with me that God did die on the cross, we have to be able to go the other way as well, because Theopaschitism is an example of idioms being communicated between the two natures in hypostatic union.
