Dr Abel Damina has recently affirmed that Jesus in the incarnation is not the same Jesus in the resurrection. The incarnate Jesus, he said, was conceived in the womb of Mary, while the Jesus who resurrected was born of the dead. The former was not useful to him, he said, while the latter was useful, because the former did not have the same powers as the latter. In other words, the incarnate one was powerless, while the resurrected one was powerful.
When his position was challenged, when it was brought to his attention that he was preaching two Christs, he replied by saying he was talking, not of two different persons, but of the same person having different qualities. The incarnate one was powerless, or not as powerful as the resurrected one. Despite his somewhat belated “clarification”, however, his position still represents a two-person doctrine about Christ. For the incarnate Word of God was the resurrected Jesus, and the resurrected Jesus was the incarnate Word of God.
The Son of God was born as man, that is, as the incarnate Word; died as man, again, as the incarnate Word; and resurrected as man, as the same incarnate Word of God. The power of the risen Christ was not absent from the incarnate Christ. His death and resurrection will be the full manifestation of the divine power that has always been in him. Damina’s statement that he could not give life to anyone in his incarnation goes far from the Gospel and from orthodox Christian doctrine. In the Gospels, even as the incarnate one and before his resurrection, he already rose the dead to life.
The lowliness and weakness of his incarnation was the powerful instrument with which God gave us life. God healed humanity through the instrumentality of the human nature he assumed at the incarnation. The power of God was shining through the weakness of his humanity. His death and his resurrection were events of his incarnation. At his incarnation, he assumed human flesh. If he had not become flesh, he would not have died. If he had not died, he would not have resurrected. Thus, his incarnation, his death and his resurrection saved us.
By assuming our humanity when he became flesh, he healed our humanity of sin; by his death he destroyed our death; and by his resurrection, he restored our life. His birth, his death and his resurrection were incarnational experiences of the same Christ. These incarnational experiences of his saved us. Only the one who creates can save. God is the one who creates. So, only God can save. The person who saved us in Jesus was God using the instrumentality of the humanity he assumed at his incarnation. The humanity of Jesus was the humanity of a God who became a man in Jesus. His incarnational experiences—birth, hunger, thirst, suffering, death, resurrection—gave us life.
He gave us life when he breathed his last on the cross, the way God breathed life into us at creation. The problem is: Damina, not understanding that the resurrection was an incarnational experience, separated the Jesus who was born of Mary from the Jesus who rose from the tomb. In Jesus, God who was born as man, taught us as man, was hungry as man, suffered as man, died as man, and resurrected as man. Despite his belated denial, Damina clearly spoke of “two Christs”. These were his own words. And the explanation he gave to his affirmation does not support his defence that he was quoted out of context. On the contrary, to use his own words, one Christ, the incarnate Christ, “was not useful to me”, while the other Christ, the resurrected Christ, “was useful to me”.
These were his own words. But Damina was not the first to propagate this teaching of two Christs. Before him was a Bishop in the early Church called Nestorius. Nestorius was the innovator of two Christs. Damina’s teaching is therefore a case of recycled Nestorianism. Nestorius was the first to deny the title “Mother of God” to Mary the mother of Jesus. But, in posting that denial, his target was not Mary. The real target of his denial was Jesus. For Nestorius, the Jesus born of Mary was not the same person as the Son of God who is God himself, who was born of the Father before time began. In the history of Christian doctrine, Nestorius’ teaching is described as a “two-person-Christology”.
It is this two-person-Christology that Damina has recycled. Against Nestorius’ teaching was that of Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria. For Cyril, Jesus is one person, not two. The one who was born of Mary is the same person who was born of the Father before time began. Since the one person born of Mary is the Son of God who is God, Mary can rightfully be called Mother of God. In response to Nestorius, the divine motherhood of Mary was already defined by the Church at the Council of Ephesus in 431, long before the Protestant Reformation. In other words, this was the faith of the Church long before the division occasioned by Protestant Reformation. It was not an invention of Roman Catholicism. The controversy between these two bishops, Nestorius and Cyril, led to the Council of Ephesus in 431.
That Council formally declared that Mary is Mother of God because the Son of God, born of Mary in human form, is God. The need to clarify this teaching of the Council of Ephesus led to the Council of Chalcedon in 451. That Council was convoked to respond to the teaching of those who thought the affirmation of the divine personhood of Jesus by the Council of Ephesus meant he was no longer human. This reduction of Jesus to one nature, that is, the divine nature is called the Monophysite heresy, from two Greek words—“mono” (one), and “phusis” (nature).
Against the Monophysites who affirmed that only one nature was in Jesus, namely, the divine nature, since he was a divine person, the Council of Chalcedon affirmed that Jesus is one person, a divine person, in whom there are two natures, namely, the divine nature in him before he became man, and the human nature he assumed when he became man.
• Fr. (Prof.) Anthony Akinwale OP is the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Augustine University, Ilara – Epe, Lagos.
