"Jesus is God" Denies that Jesus is the Christ
Listen to this teaching on the One God Report podcast episode #108, or here on YouTube.
When I
first came to understand that the man, the human person Jesus of Nazareth, is
God’s Christ (the Messiah המשיח),
the human Son of God, quite a few of my former Trinitarian and deity-of-Christ-believing
friends accused me of “denying Christ”.
Here I
was confessing and proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ, yet many people were
saying I was denying Christ!
I understand
what they were thinking, since I probably would have thought something similar
10 years ago. To the Trinitarian, or deity of Christ believer, to “deny Christ”
can mean several things, but chief among those things is to “deny” that Jesus
is literally God; more specifically, to deny that Jesus is one member of a tripersonal
god who became human. So, in a sense, they were right. I was denying that.[1]
But is
that what the New Testament means by “denying Christ”? There are several New
Testament scriptures that speak of “denying” Christ (Matt. 10:32-33, 2 Tim.
2:12, Jude 4, 1 John 2:22). The verse I would like to focus on is 1 John 2:22,
which states: “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?”.
Now let’s
read closely. This Scripture does NOT say that the liar is the one who denies
that Jesus is:
- God
- a God-Man
- co-eternal (“pre-existing”) and co-equal to
the God the Father
- of the same substance as God, the Father.
- One person of a trinity in a godhead.
- God who took on human flesh.
All these
claims are human inventions – not what the Scripture says – wrong interpretations. We need to be careful not to twist or distort
the Scriptures and insist they say something which they do not say.
What did
the author of 1 John mean when he said the liar is the one who “denies that
Jesus is the Christ?”[2]
“Jesus”
is the name of the human person, the human being, born in Bethlehem. “Jesus” is
not the name of an eternally existent deity (Matt. 1:25, Luke 2:21). We don’t
learn anywhere in the Hebrew scriptures of a 2nd divine god figure
called Jesus. In fact, the one God of the Hebrew scriptures is YHVH.
This
human Jesus is the Christ (Messiah). Many people seem to think
that “Christ” is a title for deity. It most definitely is not. “Christ/Messiah”
is never, never, ever deity or God Himself in the Bible.
“Christ”
(Hebrew, משיח Messiah) means “anointed”, in the Bible, anointed by
God. God anointed Jesus. The Anointer (God) is not the Anointed (the human
person, Jesus).
So, I discovered
that biblically, to “deny Christ” is something very different from what mainstream Christianity claims. I discovered that biblically
to “deny Christ” means that someone denies that the human person, Jesus of
Nazareth, is the Christ. And even more: I suggest that belief in the “incarnation”
- that “Jesus is God in human flesh” – that belief is a denial
that “Jesus is the Christ.”
Why? Because
the deity of Christ claim is a denial that the human person, the human being,
Jesus of Nazareth, is the Christ. The deity of Christ believer denies
that the human person Jesus who came to be in the womb of Mary is the Christ. Instead, to mainstream Christianity, no
human person Jesus came into being at that conception or at any other time;
rather, the eternal 2nd person of the godhead, God the
Son, a non-human being, somehow infused himself into the fleshy body that was conceived
and grew in Mary’s womb.
Since Trinitarian theologians claim that the
person “God the Son took on humanity”, then Jesus was never was a human person.
Otherwise, Jesus would be two persons: one eternal divine person and one human
person who had a beginning in the womb of Mary.
True,
most Trinitarian, deity of Christ believers don’t think about this or realize
this. They’ve never been taught or thought through the implications of what “incarnation”
teaching really means. But it needs to be thought through. Like the apostle Peter
claimed, we don’t want to be following cleverly devised myths (2 Pet. 1:16).
Here
are a couple ways that I think help people understand that the incarnation doctrine
(that “God took on flesh”) is an attempt to eliminate the human person, Jesus
of Nazareth.
1.
Can the man Christ Jesus function
independently of an incarnated deity just like you, I and all humans do? If the man Christ Jesus is not able to
function independent of an incarnated deity, what is he missing that you, I and
all men have? If indeed he is missing something that you, I and all men have,
he is obviously not fully man...[3]
In
other words, if the deity, the god-person is removed from Jesus, what is left?
There would remain only person-less flesh. A sort of limp lump of a person-less
human body. That person-less body is certainly not “fully human” or “truly human”.
2. How many persons were in the triune godhead
before Jesus became “incarnated”. Answer: 3
How
many persons are in the triune godhead after the incarnation? Answer:
3
So, no
new person, no human person, came into being at the incarnation. No human person
came into being and became a member of the triune God. Otherwise, there would
be four persons in the triune god, and god wouldn’t be a trinity anymore.
They would be three divine persons, and one human person.
Instead,
according to deity of Christ belief, a previously existing, eternally existing “god
person” infused himself into human flesh. If, as the incarnation doctrine must
insist, no human person came into being at the flesh conception (or any other
time), there never was a human person, Jesus of Nazareth – only human flesh
that a god person came into.
Therefore,
the deity of Christ belief, the doctrine of the incarnation, is a denial that
Jesus is the Christ. The deity of Christ incarnation belief is a denial that
the human person, Jesus of Nazareth, is the Christ, because that human person NEVER
EXISTED.
This is
the spirit of antichrist, a denial that the human person Jesus is the Christ.
What seems
to actually be going on is that mainstream Christianity is guilty of the very
thing they accuse people like me of! Mainstream Christianity accuses people who
believe that the human person Jesus is the Christ - of denying Christ! But in fact,
it is the doctrine of the incarnation which denies that the human person Jesus
is the Christ.
Some
Psychological and Sociological aspects to accusing those who believe that Jesus
is the Christ of “denying Christ”
First of
all, the “deity of Christ” accusation is a type of hypocrisy – doing something
which you accuse someone else of doing (even though in this case the someone
else isn’t doing it!).
The accusation
is a kind of “cancellation” by spreading a lie. People who believe in the
incarnation of god into man tend not to be interested in having healthy, civil
discussions about the issues. Sure, they may have a verse or two they think
claim that Jesus is literally God. But they really aren’t interested in understanding
the problems with their interpretations and better ways those few verses are
understood.
People
who believe in the incarnation of God tend to want to stifle and end
conversation with name-calling labels. In the political and social world today,
calling someone a “facist” or a “racist” is a way to cancel another viewpoint
and end conversation. In the religious world people accuse someone of “denying Christ”,
of being a “heretic” or being part of a “cult.” “Don’t pay any attention to
that person – he’s a heretic.”
There is
a certain kind of insecurity in the deity of Christ world that needs to stifle honest
questioning or different opinions. Often fear and intimidation is used as a tool
to manipulate others. Fear of social isolation or fear of eternal damnation.
The
Trinitarian name calling, “they deny Christ!” is also a kind of deflection – a known
tactic in the social-political world: "accuse enemies of exactly what you are
doing". The politician who has taken bribes accuses his opponent of taking
bribes to deflect attention from himself.
"Accuse
your enemies of that which you are guilty”: a nation accuses another of
starting a war when in reality the first nation started the war.
Is
there a man, a human person at God’s right hand, or not
Let’s ask
Trinitarian, deity of Christ believers this question. I’ll ask it in various ways for clarification:
Do have a problem
with God exalting a human person, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, to His (God’s)
right hand? Do you deny that the human person, the human being,
Jesus of Nazareth came into being, was born, lived, was put to death, was raised
from the dead by God and exalted to God’s right hand? Are you ashamed of the human
person, Jesus of Nazareth? Do you think who this human person is and what this
human person did is not sufficient to be the one mediator between God and man? Again,
is there an exalted, glorified human person at the right hand of God? Do you
have a problem with that?
#deityofchrist,
#trinity, #biblicalunitarian, #billschlegel, #denyingchrist, #antichrist
Listen on podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/CfQf3W7GwDb
Or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mQMBh-Hhiw4
Scriptures
1 John
2:22-23
Who is
the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the
antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. 23 No one who
denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father
also.
Note 1
John 3:2, my concern for Trinitarians: Are they part of the world that does not
recognize the children of God? The children of God are those who believe that
Jesus is the Christ (1 John 5:1). The implication is that for those who don’t
recognize the children of God: “they did not know Him (God).”
1 John
4:2-3, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not
confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of
which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world.”
2 John
7, “Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; any such person is the deceiver and the
antichrist.”
1 John
5:1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and
everyone who loves the parent loves the child.
Jude
1:4, “…who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only
Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
Matt. 10:32-33, “Everyone therefore who acknowledges
me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but
whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.”
2 Tim.
2:12, “…if we deny him, he will also deny us…”
[1] Ryrie
study Bible commenting on 1 John 2:18-22: “The ones of whom John was speaking…denied
the reality of the incarnation of Christ, and his relationship to the Father…The
supreme liar is the one who denies that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, that
is, that he was both man and God.”
Bethel Church of God, https://www.bethelcog.org/to-deny-christ-what-does-it-mean/
“Christ, the Son of God, appeared on this Earth as a physical human being….Prior
to His human birth, Christ was the God of the Old Testament”
Sam Storms, https://www.samstorms.org/all-articles/post/2-timothy-2:11-13:-can-a-true-believer-deny-jesus
“Make no mistake about it: to deny Jesus, to repudiate
him, to declare that he is not the Son of God incarnate…”
[3] Greg
Logan comments on Jesus Christ is not a Human Person. https://landandbible.blogspot.com/2020/08/jesus-christ-is-not-human-person.html
Comments
Isaiah 9:6 is describing the birth, according to the promise of God to David, of a king of Judah, a descendant of David, probably Hezekiah (who yes, is a type of the ultimate king of Judah and all Israel, Jesus).
“Mighty God” and “Everlasting Father” are “theophoric names”, “God carrying” names, given to human beings. Every name in Hebrew given to a human means something. With “God carrying or bearing” names, the name is given to a human being to declare a truth about who God is or what God’s relationship is to us. The names are not a declaration of the essence of the human person who has the name. Take for instance the name Jehu, the King of Israel that Elisha anointed, and who wiped out the worship of Baal from the Northern Kingdom. Jehu’s name means “He is Yahweh!”. No, Jehu was not Yahweh incarnate, but his name declared that Yahweh was God and that Yahweh was acting through the man Jehu to wipe out Baalism from Israel.
The name “Mighty God” can be understood and translated with the present tense form of be, “is”: “God is mighty”. “God is Mighty” El Gibbor, does not mean that the person bearing the name is Mighty God, but that God is mighty. The God of Israel showed himself to be mighty in the days of the Prophet Isaiah and the Davidic King Hezekiah. In one night, the God of Israel decimated the mighty Assyrian empire’s army. Assyria was attacking Judah. But one morning the Judeans woke up and the mighty Assyrian army “were all dead bodies” (Isaiah 37:36). Indeed, Hezekiah’s God is a Mighty God.
This is why the child to be born was also called “Everlasting Father”. The name “Everlasting Father” alone shows the Trinitarian appeal to this verse is wrong. If you want to say that Jesus is a “Mighty God” from Isaiah 9:6, then Jesus is the Everlasting Father. But the truth is that the name, Everlasting Father, is given to a human being as a reminder that our God, the one true God, is Father to us. He cares for us and has our well being in mind, forever. By the way, I personally know a couple people named “Everlasting Father” (Aviad). None of them think they are God Almighty. But their name declares a truth about God. Also by the way, I personally know about five Immanuels. None of them think they are God incarnate.
These names in Isaiah 9:6 had application to a person born in the days of Isaiah the prophet, otherwise Isaiah the prophet was a liar. We must interpret the Scriptures in their historical grammatical context. Most likely these theophoric names have reference to King Hezekiah of the House of David. In Hezekiah’s days Yahweh proved Himself to be a Wonderful Counselor, a Mighty God, and an Everlasting Father.
No one in the New Testament appeals to Isaiah 9:6 to prove the "deity of Christ". Does your friend no more than Jesus and the apostles?
For more information, see about 1/2 to 2/3 the way down in this article. The whole article is applicable.
https://landandbible.blogspot.com/2021/12/finding-evidence-for-deity-of-christ-in.html
Or, you can hear the audio on One God Report Podcast #60, 61. 62.
-Kris
Obviously not all uses of the word lord refer to the Tetragrammaton. But in cases such as when Christ said not all who come to me saying lord lord will enter the kingdom of heaven. The grammar is awkward as written yet is reminiscent of the old testament saying lord LORD, or in Hebrew Adonai YHWH.
We also see similarities in Jesus’ “I am” statement and YHWH’s “I am” statements in the Old Testament. The writers of the new testament illustrate this purposefully to testify that Christ is he, the great I Am, YHWH.
•Isaiah 33: 22 For YHWH is our judge, YHWH is our lawgiver, YHWH is our king; he will save us.
YHWH is judge and king yet here you are giving those titles to someone you claim is merely a man.
•Jeremiah 17: 10 I YHWH search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
•Mathew 16: 27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
•John 5: 22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:
Revelation 22: 12 And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
•Revelation 2: 23 …and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
Here we see in Jeremiah it is YHWH who judges man, searching their hearts and giving to them according to their works. Yet in the new testament we see Jesus himself says the father judges no man, yet Christ does.
•Isaiah 43: 11 I, even I, am YHWH; and beside me there is no saviour
Here YHWH says he alone is our savior. How come the New Testament writers attributed that title to Jesus?
•Isaiah 9: 6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, THE MIGHTY GOD, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Isaiah wrote the messiah would be the mighty God (El Gibor) a title reserved specifically for YHWH as we see in Isaiah 10:21
•Isaiah 62: 5 For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.
•Isaiah 54: 5 For thy Maker is thine husband; YHWH of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.
Here in Isaiah we see YHWH is the bridegroom yet if we look at the new testament…
•Mark 2: 19 And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.
20 But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.
•Revelation 19:7 Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
Here in the new testament we see Christ is the bridegroom.
I could go on forever but I think the point has been made. The writers of the new testament testified that Christ is YHWH in a million different ways. The Jews charged Jesus with blasphemy precisely because he claimed to be God. Either Christ is who he said he is, or you’re right and he’s not. Yet the resurrection proves otherwise. Jesus Christ IS YHWH God in the flesh!!!
Mathew 4:14-16 references Isaiah 9. Mathew undoubtedly held to the belief the child prophesied was Jesus.
The relevant text reads: “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). Notice first what the text does and does not say. It does not say, “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is a human person who first came into personal existence in Mary’s womb?” Nor does it say, “Who is the liar but he who denies that the Messiah must be a merely human person?” Those are additions supplied by the argument under examination. If it is illegitimate for a Trinitarian to load an entire Christology into the single predicate “Christ,” then it is equally illegitimate for a Unitarian to load a Photinian or adoptionistic anthropology into it. One cannot object to theological interpretation and then immediately smuggle one’s own theological interpretation into the text as though it were identical with the grammatical meaning of the sentence.
The Catholic Church confesses without qualification that Jesus is the Christ. Every Mass, every Creed, every traditional Christological formula, and indeed the very name “Jesus Christ” confesses precisely this. What Catholic Christianity additionally asks is who this Jesus is. Saying that Jesus is the Messiah identifies his office and mission; it does not exhaustively define his ontology. “Messiah” answers, broadly speaking, what office he fulfills as the Anointed One. It does not by itself answer whether the person who fulfills that office existed before his human conception, whether he is divine, whether he is the eternal Son, or what relation his humanity bears to his divinity. To reason from “Messiah means anointed” to “therefore the Messiah cannot be divine” is simply a non sequitur.
This point is elementary but decisive. “King” is not intrinsically a title of deity either, yet God can be King. “Judge” is not intrinsically a title of deity, yet God is Judge. “Shepherd” is not intrinsically a title of deity, yet the Old Testament repeatedly calls YHWH the Shepherd of Israel. A title can describe an office exercised by someone without exhausting the nature of the one exercising it. Consequently, even if one granted the statement that משיח or χριστός does not lexically mean “God,” absolutely nothing follows concerning whether the person who is the Messiah may also possess the divine nature. The Catholic position has never been that the lexical meaning of χριστός is “God.” The argument therefore refutes something Catholic theology does not teach.
This is also why describing Christian doctrine as belief in “a second divine god figure called Jesus” profoundly misrepresents Nicene Christianity. Catholic doctrine explicitly denies that there are two Gods. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three specimens belonging to a class called “god,” nor are they three components or “members” of a larger divine organism. Thomistic Trinitarian theology is particularly uncompromising on this point: there is one numerically identical divine essence, one divine being, one divine intellect, one divine will, and one divine operation, subsisting in three really distinct Persons distinguished by relations of origin. Calling the Son “true God from true God” therefore does not introduce another deity alongside YHWH. It confesses that the Son possesses numerically the same undivided divine nature as the Father.
The central error of the argument, however, appears when it moves from exegesis to Christology and asserts that if the eternal Son became incarnate, “Jesus was never a human person,” and therefore somehow “there never was a human Jesus.” This inference equivocates between “human person” and “human being.” Classical Christology denies that Christ is a second, created human hypostasis alongside the eternal hypostasis of the Word. It does not remotely deny that Christ is a true man, possesses a complete human nature, has a human body, a rational human soul, a human intellect, a human will, human affections, human operations, and everything belonging essentially to humanity except sin.
This distinction between nature and person is not verbal trickery invented to escape a difficulty. It is precisely the distinction without which the doctrine of the Incarnation cannot even be formulated coherently. “Nature” answers the question what something is; “person” or suppositum answers the question who subsists and acts in that nature. In ordinary human beings, each complete human nature subsists in its own created personal suppositum. Peter possesses human nature and Peter is a human person. Paul possesses human nature and Paul is a human person. But it does not follow that having a created human personal suppositum is itself a constituent part of human nature comparable to having a rational soul, intellect, will, or body.
This is exactly the distinction St. Thomas makes in the Tertia Pars of the Summa. Aquinas explicitly begins his analysis of the Incarnation by observing that “person” and “nature” signify differently. Human nature designates what makes a thing human; person designates the subsisting subject possessing that nature. The union in Christ occurs in the Person or hypostasis, not by merging the divine and human natures into some third nature. The one who subsists in both is the eternal Son.
That confession directly destroys the caricature according to which the Incarnation means that a divine spirit somehow “infused himself into” an otherwise mindless piece of flesh. Such a theory would be closer to precisely the sort of defective Christology that Catholic orthodoxy rejected. The Word did not merely take possession of a biological organism. He assumed complete human nature. The Church explicitly teaches that Christ possessed a rational human soul, genuine human knowledge, a genuine human intellect, and a genuinely human will. The Catholic Catechism summarizes the traditional doctrine by stating that Christ’s humanity was “assumed, not absorbed,” and that the Son worked with human hands, thought with a human mind, acted with a human will, and loved with a human heart.
Aquinas is even more useful here because he confronts almost exactly the objection raised in the article. If Christ’s body and soul are truly united, the objection runs, would this not generate another human hypostasis in addition to the Word? Aquinas answers that Christ is a man in exactly the same specific sense in which other human beings are men, and therefore the union of rational soul and body must be completely real. To deny this would destroy the truth of Christ’s humanity. Yet Christ’s human nature does not terminate in a second created suppositum because that complete human nature is personally subsistent in the Word.
The “limp lump of person-less flesh” argument is therefore based upon a category mistake. Personhood is being imagined as though it were one additional psychological or biological component alongside body and soul, rather like an organ which Catholic theology supposedly removes from Christ and substitutes with divinity. But that is not what “person” means in classical metaphysics. A human nature consists essentially of the principles required for humanity, most fundamentally rational soul and body. The suppositum is the subsisting “who” whose nature it is. Christ lacks nothing whatsoever belonging to human nature simply because that human nature does not constitute an independently existing created suppositum distinct from the Word.
Indeed, the proposed objection accidentally illustrates the reason the orthodox doctrine insists upon one Person. If beside the eternal Son there existed another personal subject, a separately subsisting “human person Jesus,” then there would be two someones in Christ: one divine someone and one human someone. The question would immediately arise which one was born of Mary, which one spoke, which one suffered, which one redeemed mankind, and how one could truthfully say that the Word himself became flesh rather than merely becoming associated with another man. That is precisely the direction of Nestorian separation which Catholic Christology rejects.
Aquinas consequently insists that both propositions “God is man” and “man is God” can be true when their concrete terms designate the one subsisting Person of Christ. He explicitly explains that the word “man” can stand for the hypostasis possessing human nature, and in Christ that hypostasis is the eternal Son. The human nature is temporal; its suppositum is eternal. Thus there is no “new God,” because the one who begins to possess human nature is the already eternal Son.
This also exposes the weakness of the argument based upon the name “Jesus.” Certainly the spoken human name “Jesus” was bestowed in history. Catholic doctrine has never claimed that the sequence of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, or English sounds represented by “Jesus” was eternally uttered as the proper temporal name of the Son before the Incarnation. But names designate subjects. The fact that a subject receives a new designation after acquiring a new relation or condition does not imply that the subject himself began to exist when the name was bestowed. The eternal Son began to be man in time and received the human name Jesus in time. The subject designated by that name, however, is the same eternal Person who existed before the Incarnation.
St. John’s Gospel expresses precisely this continuity of subject when it says that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). It does not say that the Word entered into partnership with an independently subsisting human person. Nor does it say that an ordinary human person came into existence and was subsequently elevated into association with the Word. The subject of ἐγένετο σάρξ is the Logos already introduced as existing “in the beginning,” being “with God,” and being God (John 1:1). The one who becomes flesh is the one who already was.
The same Johannine pattern appears repeatedly. Christ speaks of the glory he had with the Father “before the world existed” (John 17:5). He declares, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). John the Baptist says of Jesus, “He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me” (John 1:15, 30). The Son is described as descending from heaven and as having been sent into the world. Whatever individual exegetical disputes may surround particular texts, it is impossible to reduce Johannine Christology without residue to the proposition that Jesus is merely a human person who first began to exist in Mary’s womb.
This matters particularly for 1 John 4:2 and 2 John 7. The confession is that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” The Catholic Christian confesses this in the strongest possible sense. Jesus Christ truly came in flesh. His flesh is real, his birth is real, his human mind is real, his human will is real, his sufferings are real, and his death is real. The doctrine of the Incarnation was historically formulated precisely to defend this reality against theories that compromised either Christ’s divinity or his humanity. The suggestion that Catholic Christology somehow means that Christ merely wore a human body as a costume is therefore not a criticism of Catholic doctrine but a criticism of a position Catholic doctrine itself condemns.
The Sixth Ecumenical Council, Constantinople III, makes the point particularly devastating to the “personless flesh” caricature. The council teaches two natural wills and two natural operations in the one Christ, divine and human. Christ therefore possesses genuinely human volition and genuinely human activity, not merely divine activity occurring through an inert body. His humanity acts according to the capacities proper to human nature while remaining the humanity of the one divine Person.
Consequently, the question “Can the man Christ Jesus function independently of an incarnated deity just like you and I do?” is badly formulated. If “function” means exercise authentically human intellectual, volitional, bodily, and affective operations, Catholic theology emphatically answers yes: Christ thinks humanly through a human intellect, wills humanly through a human will, sees through human eyes, walks with human feet, suffers through human passibility, learns experientially according to his human cognitive powers, and dies according to his mortal humanity. If “independently” means “subsist as another personal subject independently of the eternal Word,” then the answer is no, because that hypothetical condition would no longer describe the Incarnation at all. It would describe two persons associated with one another.
But independent created hypostatic subsistence is not a faculty of human nature. It is therefore fallacious to argue that because Christ’s humanity does not constitute another hypostasis, it must lack something required for being human. The Church expressly teaches the opposite: nothing essential to humanity is missing. Chalcedon calls Christ “perfect in humanity” and “consubstantial with us according to humanity.”
This is where the argument’s numerical observation about the Trinity also fails. Before the Incarnation there are three divine Persons; after the Incarnation there remain three divine Persons. Correct. That is not an embarrassment for Catholic Christology. It is Catholic Christology. The Incarnation does not mean that a fourth person entered the Trinity. It means that the second Person of the Trinity assumed a created human nature. There is a new human nature, not a new personal subject alongside the Son. The Son begins to exist humanly without beginning to exist personally.
One might put the Catholic answer in Thomistic terms as follows. Human nature in Christ possesses everything belonging to the essence of humanity. What it does not possess is an autonomous created suppositum distinct from the Word. But suppositum is not another constituent of the essence “humanity.” Rather, the complete human nature exists personally in the eternal suppositum of the Son. Aquinas therefore has no difficulty saying both that Christ is genuinely a man and that this man is personally the eternal Son. Far from “eliminating” the humanity, the hypostatic union preserves it while giving it the unique personal subsistence of the Word.
Nor does the Catholic doctrine make Christ less genuinely human than us. It makes him unlike us with respect to the mode of personal subsistence, not with respect to the essence of human nature. The humanity of Peter exists in the person of Peter; Christ’s humanity exists in the Person of the Son. Peter and Christ nevertheless share the same specifically human nature. This is why Chalcedon could simultaneously deny two persons in Christ and declare him homoousios hēmin, consubstantial with us according to his humanity.
The accusation that Christianity thereby denies “the human person Jesus” therefore depends almost entirely upon the equivocal phrase “human person.” If the phrase means “a person who is genuinely human,” then Jesus unquestionably is one: the divine Person of the Son truly is human because he truly possesses human nature. If “human person” instead means “a created personal hypostasis whose personal existence originates from human generation,” then Catholicism denies that Christ is such a person—but 1 John nowhere states that the Messiah must be such a person. The alleged biblical refutation has thus been produced by defining the disputed conclusion into the phrase “human person” and then reading that definition back into Scripture.
It is especially ironic to label this Catholic doctrine “antichrist” on the basis of 1 John 4:2–3. The historic dogmatic tradition most rigorously accused of excessive metaphysical subtlety was developed precisely to protect the confession that the eternal Son really “came in the flesh.” Docetism compromised the flesh. Apollinarianism compromised Christ’s rational human soul. Monophysitism compromised the abiding integrity of the human nature. Monothelitism compromised the human will. Nestorian tendencies compromised the unity of the acting subject. Catholic orthodoxy rejected all of them because the biblical confession requires simultaneously that the one Jesus Christ be genuinely divine, genuinely human, and personally one.
Nor is the word “heresy” merely religious name-calling. Historically and technically, a heresy is a post-baptismal obstinate denial of a truth which the Church proposes as divinely revealed. Whether a particular individual bears formal culpability is a separate canonical and moral question, but the theological classification of a proposition as heretical is not equivalent to shouting an insult. “Christ possesses only one nature,” “Christ has no human rational soul,” “Christ has only one will,” and “Christ is a created human person rather than the eternal divine Son” are identifiable doctrinal propositions. The Church can assess propositions without pretending to possess exhaustive knowledge of the subjective culpability of every person who holds them.
The final challenge concerning the man at God’s right hand is therefore answered without the slightest embarrassment. Yes, Jesus Christ is truly man. Yes, the humanity born of the Virgin Mary was crucified, died, rose bodily, ascended bodily, and is glorified. Yes, the risen Christ possesses a real glorified human body and a genuine human soul. Yes, “the man Christ Jesus” is the one mediator between God and men. None of this contradicts his divinity.
Aquinas explicitly discusses 1 Timothy 2:5 and says that Christ is Mediator precisely according to his humanity. As God, the Son possesses the same divine nature as the Father and therefore is not “between” humanity and God in the relevant sense. As man, however, he stands between God and fallen humanity and joins mankind to God by his obedience, satisfaction, sacrifice, prayer, and communication of divine gifts. Aquinas therefore affirms without hesitation that Christ is “most truly called Mediator, as man.”
This is not an awkward concession extracted from Trinitarian theology. It is classical Trinitarian theology. The divine Person acts according to both natures. According to divinity, the Son is consubstantial with the Father, Creator, eternal, omnipotent, and the source of grace. According to humanity, the same Son is born, obeys, prays, suffers, merits, offers sacrifice, dies, rises, and mediates. The distinction is between natures, not between two sons or two personal subjects.
The phrase “at the right hand of God” also does not require imagining two spatially juxtaposed beings, one called God and another called Jesus. God the Father is incorporeal. His “right hand” signifies royal authority, glory, and exaltation. The risen humanity of Christ is truly exalted; the Person possessing that humanity is the eternal Son. The same Jesus can therefore be both the man exalted by God according to his humanity and, according to his divine nature, the consubstantial Son who shares the Father’s divine glory.
The deepest irony appears when the article appeals to 1 John’s insistence upon the Son. Immediately after saying that the liar is the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ, John adds: “This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father” (1 John 2:22–23). John’s confession is therefore not exhausted by recognizing that a man named Jesus received messianic appointment. His theology concerns the identity of the Son and his relation to the Father. The same epistle speaks of the eternal life that was “with the Father” and was manifested, of God sending his only-begotten Son into the world, and of the Father sending the Son as Savior. The Catholic confession takes all of those statements seriously together.
The proper question is consequently not whether Catholics confess that “Jesus is the Christ.” They obviously do. The question is what Scripture means when it identifies this Jesus as Son, Word, Lord, the one sent from the Father, the one who comes from heaven, the one possessing glory with the Father before the world existed, the one through whom all things came into being, and the one who truly came in flesh. The Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation is not a denial of the human Jesus devised to escape these texts. It is the doctrinal synthesis demanded by refusing to discard either side of the biblical testimony.
The Church refuses to solve the mystery by making Christ less than God, but it equally refuses to solve it by making him less than man. He is not a divine person pretending to be human, nor a divine mind piloting a human body, nor God inhabiting an independently existing man, nor an ordinary human person subsequently elevated to divine status. He is “one and the same” Jesus Christ, true God and true man, eternally begotten according to his divinity and born in time from the Virgin according to his humanity. The human nature is complete; the divine nature is unchanged; the personal subject is one.
Thus the statement “Jesus is God” does not deny that Jesus is the Christ. Properly understood, it identifies who the Christ is. And the statement “Jesus is the Christ” does not entail that Jesus is merely a created human person. The Biblical Unitarian argument obtains that conclusion only by silently adding it to the text and then accusing Catholic theology of contradicting what the text supposedly says.
That is why Chalcedon could confess without contradiction that the same Christ is “perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood,” and why Constantinople III could insist upon both a genuine divine operation and a genuine human operation in that same single Person. The Catholic doctrine does not deny the man Jesus of Nazareth. It takes his humanity so seriously that it anathematized every theory that deprived him of a true human body, rational soul, intellect, will, operation, suffering, or death. What it denies is something Scripture nowhere requires us to confess: that beside the eternal Son there must exist another created personal subject in order for Christ to be genuinely human.
And that distinction is precisely where the article’s argument fails. It mistakes the absence of a second human hypostasis for the absence of humanity itself. In Thomistic terms, it confuses the suppositum with the nature; in historical terms, its proposed remedy for Chalcedonian Christology moves toward the very division of subjects that the Church rejected in the Nestorian controversy; and exegetically, it imports the phrase “created human person” into texts that speak instead of Jesus Christ, the Son who has come in the flesh.
The Christian confession is therefore not “Jesus is God instead of being the Christ.” It is: Jesus is the Christ because the eternal Son truly became man and fulfilled in his assumed humanity the messianic mission appointed by the Father. His being God does not cancel his being man, and his being man does not cancel his being God. The mystery consists precisely in the fact that the same indivisible personal subject is both.
In the concise language of traditional Christology: aliud est natura, aliud persona. Confuse those two, and the Incarnation appears absurd. Distinguish them correctly, and the supposed contradiction vanishes.