St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote of the reason for the Incarnation: 

“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?” (Orat. Catech., 15)

 

The Catholic Catechism goes on to say as well of the Incarnation, quoting Ss. Irenaeus and Athanasius:

“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.” (Par. 460)

In the never-ending debates with Calvinists (and Lutherans), the questions of the proper views of the Trinity, Incarnation and salvation continually arise.  What becomes evident to those weathered in these disputes is he differing theologies that arise from these camps when compared with the Catholic view. As we will see, our Catechism in masterly fashion, explains the Scriptural, patristic and conciliar theology of the first seven centuries in an erudite, pristine fashion.  And, to be sure, most Calvinists and Lutherans are not willfully desiring to be Nestorian or Pelagian, but as I’ve come to see, there’s often a lot of misunderstanding.  In other words, they are these errors without knowing it.  

 

So, first, let’s get clear on the orthodox position.  All “historic” professions, including Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists are supposed to be orthodox, basically speaking, when it comes to the Incarnation.  But a good desire to be so does not always mean it is so.  Unfortunately, most people in all three groups, when asked whether Jesus was a human person, would answer, “yes.”  This is heresy of Nestorianism, the idea that there is a human person, Jesus of Nazareth, who is the subject of the human actions, such as weeping, bleeding and dying.  The Logos, the Son of God, is the person who worked the miracles and performed the divine acts, like resurrection and ascension.  In Nestorianism, a man showed himself to be good and holy, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Logos united Himself to this “holy man.”  This is the heresy found in such garbage as the play “Godspell” or the film “The Last Temptation of Christ.”  The makers of these pop works didn’t have a clue what the biblical and Catholic view of the Incarnation is, but like all unbelievers, were blind to the true identity of the Son of God Incarnate.  That was no mere man born of Mary, it was God.  

 

The Catechism, citing St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Council of Ephesus, states of Nestorianism:

 

“The Nestorian heresy regarded Christ as a human person joined to the divine person of God’s Son. Opposing this heresy, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the third ecumenical council, at Ephesus in 431, confessed “that the Word, uniting to himself in his person the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man.” Christ’s humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it his own, from his conception. For this reason 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: “Mother of God, not that the nature of the Word or his divinity received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis [Person], was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh.”

 

The key here is that Christ’s entire Incarnate life has no other subject than the divine Person of the Son. No “Jesus-dude,” troubled and doubting of his true mission and status, as we see pictured in pop culture.  We see this often in evangelicalism, which more often than not does not have a grasp of the Trinity and the Incarnation.  Jesus is often seen here as a holy man who earned his status as divine for being good.  But what about Lutherans and Calvinists who have a more historical and somewhat more sophisticated view?  Do not the Lutheran and Calvinist confessions speak of the deity of Christ and the Incarnation? They sure do, but the question is, do they grasp it? Do they really hold these orthodox positions, or do they hold conflicting positions which cannot be reconciled?  Unfortunately, the latter is the case.  

 

The Calvinistic Westminster Confession, my own former confession, states the following concerning the Incarnation in Chapter VIII:

 

“I. The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man’s nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God, and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.”

Interestingly, the confession does not mention a human will in Christ, which makes one wonder whether it might be ok for a confessional Calvinist to deny a human will in the Incarnate God-man, and embrace the heresy of monothelitism, the offshoot of the monophysite (one nature) heresy, which denied a fully human nature, opting instead for a divino-human confusion.  Monothelistim was its stepchild, which insisted that in Christ Incarnate, there is really only an over-powering divine will, as the monothelite Pyrrhus of Constantinople said. It does say the human nature of Christ has all the essential properties of human nature, but is will one of those properties? The point here is that most, not all, Calvinists tend to deny free will. In my former church, we read Luther’s Bondage of the Will with glee, and gloated that there was no free will.  

 

If there is no human will in Christ, with its own natural energy, then He did not have a fully human nature, since it has always been understood that man has a self-determining will as part of human nature made in the image of God. This distinguishes him from beasts and inanimate matter.  As I argued in another post, Calvinists openly share Pelagius’ view of man prior to the fall.   The Catholic Encyclopedia says of Pelagius’ view:

“In it [Pelagius’ work on St. Paul’s epistles] Pelagius denied the primitive state in paradise and original sin (cf. P.L., XXX, 678, “Insaniunt, qui de Adam per traducem asserunt ad nos venire peccatum”), insisted on the naturalness of concupiscence and the death of the body, and ascribed the actual existence and universality of sin to the bad example which Adam set by his first sin.”

 

The Catholic view of man in the garden is as follows in the Encyclopedia:

 

“According to Catholic theology based on the Biblical account, the original condition of our first parents was one of perfect innocence and integrity. By the latter is meant that they were endowed with many prerogatives which, while pertaining to the natural order, were not due to human nature as such–hence they are sometimes termed preternatural. Principal among these were a high degree of infused knowledge, bodily immortality and freedom from pain, and immunity from evil impulses or inclinations. In other words, the lower or animal nature in manwas perfectly subjected to the control of reason and the will. Besides this, our first parents were also endowed with sanctifying grace by which they were elevated to the supernatural order. But all these gratuitous endowments were forfeited through the disobedience of Adam “in whom all have sinned”, and who was “a figure of Him who was to come” (Romans 5) and restore fallen man, not to an earthly, but to a heavenly paradise.”

 

And in the Catechism, citing Genesis and the Council of Trent,  we read:

“The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ.

375 The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice”. This grace of original holiness was “to share in. . .divine life”.

376 By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed. As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called “original justice”.

377 The “mastery” over the world that God offered man from the beginning was realized above all within man himself: mastery of self. The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason.

378 The sign of man’s familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden. There he lives “to till it and keep it”. Work is not yet a burden, but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation.

379 This entire harmony of original justice, foreseen for man in God’s plan, will be lost by the sin of our first parents.”

So, there was no merit involved here, and man lost the grace of God through his fall. What remained was nature, but it was a nature fallen and corrupted.  It not only lacked grace and divine life from God, but was now subject to carnal passions, sickness, death and further punishment from God.  Calvinists, however, deny that man needed or was given grace in the garden, because in this view, nature is grace.  The question then arises, what was lost? A consistent answer for a serious Lutheran or Calvinist is human nature. 

 

Luther said the image of God is gone and we are now mere beasts.  But the problem gets really hairy when we look at the Incarnation if this is so.  How could Jesus assume our nature, if nature is now evil.  A Calvinist recently told me in a discussion that human nature is now evil.  If it is, what did Jesus assume?  They will admit that He assumed a fully human nature as their confession says above, but the human nature he assumed was capable of suffering and death.  It was not the heavenly flesh of gnostic fantasy, so it had to be a human nature consubstantial with ours, even in its fallen state.  in fact, their confession says:

 

“[Jesus] did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man’s nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin…”

 

Note that it says common infirmities.  That means He assumed our lowly state, as St. Paul says, by condescending to our weakness, and saved it thereby.  Hebrews says:

 

“2:14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. 16 For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. 17 Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. 4:15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”

 

So, the Logos assumed a fallen human nature, capable of dying and with the effects of the fall, except without concupiscence or sin, because He was not of a human father.  As the text above says, He took human nature, not angelic nature, and tasted of death.  Death and suffering are effects and consequences of the fall.  Therefore Jesus assumed a fallen human nature, yet without sin.   This means one must hold the Catholic nature/grace view, where human nature is not, considered in itself, evil. Nature is not and cannot be evil.  It is good, because God does not do evil, or create evil.  To say that He does is Manichaean and gnostic dualism.  

 

And so this is how and why we say Calvinism are both Pelagian and gnostic and Nestorian.  Nestorian, in that Jesus has to be a man capable of being damned for the sake of the elect, as Luther says, and suffering the equivalent of eternal damnation in the three days.  Luther reasons that this is only fair, as it’s a legal transaction where our sins and penalty, which is eternal damnation, are imputed to Christ, who transfers to us His righteous legal state.  But this is anti-trinitarian, because the Father and Son share the same divine will, and remember what we saw above in St. Cyril and Ephesus–there is only one subject for all the experiences of the incarnate God-man, the Logos.  There is no human person as a subject. This is why the Catechism explains, citing the council and the liturgies:

“After the Council of Chalcedon, some made of Christ’s human nature a kind of personal subject. Against them, the fifth ecumenical council, at Constantinople in 553, confessed that “there is but one hypostasis [or person], which is our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Trinity.” Thus everything in Christ’s human nature is to be attributed to his divine person as its proper subject, not only his miracles but also his sufferings and even his death: “He who was crucified in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, is true God, Lord of glory, and one of the Holy Trinity.”

469 The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man and our brother:

“What he was, he remained and what he was not, he assumed”, sings the Roman Liturgy. And the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom proclaims and sings: “O only-begotten Son and Word of God, immortal being, you who deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, you who without change became man and were crucified, O Christ our God, you who by your death have crushed death, you who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us!”

So how does this relate to Calvinism and Lutheranism?  If Jesus is to be damned and separated from the Father truly, then reformation theology needs a separate subject to undergo this damnation, since the Father and Son can never be divided in will, because they share the same will. They share the same will, because there is one nature in the godhead. This is why we say there are two wills in Christ Incarnate, because there are two natures.  Will is a property of nature, not person, as we have said above.  If will is an aspect of person, there would be one will in Jesus, because of one divine Person, and three wills in the Trinity because there are three Persons. But no one holds there are three wills in the Trinity, because that’s tri-theism.  Likewise, all Calvinists confess there are two natures in Christ, human and divine.

 

The death He suffered was in His humanity: His divine Person was never separated or cut off from the Father. He was not damned by the Father.  Besides, what should we think of a Father who damns His own righteous Son, the Son of His eternal love?  Who would ever serve a God who damns those He loves–especially His Son, who is always in the bosom of the Father (John 1;18)? That’s more like a fickle, pagan Zeus, than the exalted and unique Jehovah of Scripture.  There is no human Jesus-person who is sent to hell for the legal justification of the elect.  There, however, is a Divine Son who suffers in the flesh for us, and raises our fallen nature to heaven (Eph. 1:22-23). 

Luther wrote, in heretical fashion, as follows:

 

“Christ himself suffered the dread and horror of a distressed conscience that tasted eternal wrath;’ ‘it was not a game, or a joke, or play-acting when he said, “Thou hast forsaken me”; for then he felt himself really forsaken in all things even as a sinner is forsaken” (Werke, 5. 602, 605)

The Catechism accurately sets itself off from this view:

“The agony at Gethsemani

612 The cup of the New Covenant, which Jesus anticipated when he offered himself at the Last Supper, is afterwards accepted by him from his Father’s hands in his agony in the garden at Gethsemani, making himself “obedient unto death”. Jesus prays: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. . .” Thus he expresses the horror that death represented for his human nature. Like ours, his human nature is destined for eternal life; but unlike ours, it is perfectly exempt from sin, the cause of death. Above all, his human nature has been assumed by the divine person of the “Author of life”, the “Living One”. By accepting in his human will that the Father’s will be done, he accepts his death as redemptive, for “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.”

Christ’s death is the unique and definitive sacrifice

613 Christ’s death is both the Paschal sacrifice that accomplishes the definitive redemption of men, through “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”,and the sacrifice of the New Covenant, which restores man to communion with God by reconciling him to God through the “blood of the covenant, which was poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”.

614 This sacrifice of Christ is unique; it completes and surpasses all other sacrifices. First, it is a gift from God the Father himself, for the Father handed his Son over to sinners in order to reconcile us with himself. At the same time it is the offering of the Son of God made man, who in freedom and love offered his life to his Father through the Holy Spirit in reparation for our disobedience.

Jesus substitutes his obedience for our disobedience

615 “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who “makes himself an offering for sin“, when “he bore the sin of many”, and who “shall make many to be accounted righteous”, for “he shall bear their iniquities”. Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.

Jesus consummates his sacrifice on the cross

616 It is love “to the end” that confers on Christ’s sacrifice its value as redemption and reparation, as atonement and satisfaction. He knew and loved us all when he offered his life. Now “the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.” No man, not even the holiest, was ever able to take on himself the sins of all men and offer himself as a sacrifice for all. The existence in Christ of the divine person of the Son, who at once surpasses and embraces all human persons, and constitutes himself as the Head of all mankind, makes possible his redemptive sacrifice for all.

617 The Council of Trent emphasizes the unique character of Christ’s sacrifice as “the source of eternal salvation”and teaches that “his most holy Passion on the wood of the cross merited justification for us.” And the Church venerates his cross as she sings: “Hail, O Cross, our only hope.”

And in 624:

 

“By the grace of God” Jesus tasted death “for every one”. In his plan of salvation, God ordained that his Son should not only “die for our sins” but should also “taste death”, experience the condition of death, the separation of his soul from his body, between the time he expired on the cross and the time he was raised from the dead. The state of the dead Christ is the mystery of the tomb and the descent into hell. It is the mystery of Holy Saturday, when Christ, lying in the tomb, reveals God’s great sabbath rest after the fulfillment of man’s salvation, which brings peace to the whole universe.”

 

Thus, there is no human person “Jesus” who was literally made sin and damned in a legal exchange.  Jesus did not experience in change or death or division in His divine nature or divine Person, since this is impossible: the divine nature is impassible.  He did really assume our fallen state and suffer in His human nature, however. This is a great mystery.  Without these  Catholic safeguards, there is only shifting sands of this academic and that theologian: Luther or Calvin, Zwingli or some other character, who do not even agree amongst themselves on the basics of christology, and end up with monstrous ideas like Jesus being damned or a completely determined human will (or even no natural human will at all, because human will is a fantasy, as Luther said).  There are no safeguards in Protestantism, and one could conceivably be a good Calvinist and reject, say two wills in Christ.  The Trinity and the Incarnation are the principal mysteries of our faith, which is the true faith, and which those outside cannot grasp or understand–because they are outside, unless God grants them grace.