Christology

Order of Christian Initiation for Adults 2026-2027

Class #10 Outline

Christology/The Incarnation

Why did God Become Man?

• CCC 456With the Nicene Creed, we answer by confessing: "For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man."
• CCC 457 The Word became flesh for us in order to save us by reconciling us with God, who "loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins": "the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world", and "he was revealed to take away sins": Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again. We had lost the possession of the good; it was necessary for it to be given back to us. Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior; prisoners, help; slaves, a liberator. Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state?
• CCC 458 The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God's love: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him." "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."
• CCC 459 The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness.
• CCC 460 The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."

Hypostatic Union

• Dogmatic Statement declaring that Jesus’s fully human nature and fully divine nature is united in the single person as the Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
• Formally declared at the Second Council of Constantinople (553 AD), implicitly stated at the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD)

Ecumenical Councils

• • Council of Nicaea 325
    • The first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 325 confessed in its Creed that the Son of God is "begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father", and condemned Arius.
    • Arius believed the Son was created, not the same substance as the Father.
  • Council of Ephesus 431 AD
    • The Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God by the human conception of the Son of God in her womb.
    • Also Condemned the heresy of Nestorius who believed that Jesus was a human person joined to a divine person.
  • Council of Chalcedon 451
    • Condemned the Monophysites who believed that Jesus had one nature and was one person
  • Second Council of Constantinople
    • Formally declared the dogma of the Hypostatic Union

Summary of Heresies

• Arianism (the Son is created, not consubstantial with the Father)
• Nestorianism (Jesus was a human person and divine person)
• Monophysitism (The Incarnation is a mixture of Human and Divine nature, not fully either)
• Apollinarianism (Jesus did not have a human soul)
• Adoptionism (Jesus was not divine, became divinized through his actions)
• Docetism (The Son appeared as human, but was not actually human)