Crisis Regarding Christ

by The Very Rev. Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw


The Very Rev. Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw; Dean

Some years ago a preacher visited my church. After the Sunday School class, during which I was teaching on various cults, he said, "In my church we have no creed but Christ." I responded, "Which Christ? The one of the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the word-faith movement, the kenotic Christ, or of the ancient creeds?" Today we have a crisis regarding Christ because we no longer value truth.

Suffice it to say, the historic Church has always assumed that there was truth and error, not just opinions. It was zealous to maintain the truth about the Son as revealed in Holy Scripture. It was not tolerant (the politically correct word today) of error concerning Christ, though they could be tolerant of minor things. It came together on several occasions in ecumenical councils to proclaim the Gospel, the truth about Christ, writing doctrinal statements that were considered binding on all Christians. It realized that faith was only as good as its object, and the object of faith (Christ) only as good as the content about Him. And from that day to now, those councils, especially the Council of Chalcedon, have been considered by all branches of Christendom, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodoxy, to be the epitome of orthodoxy regarding the person of Christ. During the greatest revival in the history of the Church, the Reformation, the Reformers did not challenge Chalcedon's teaching that Christ was fully God, fully man yet sinless, one person, and no mixture of the two natures of divinity and humanity (John 1:1-3, 14; 5:28; 10:30; Col. 1:15ff; 2:9; Heb. 1:1ff; etc). That was bedrock.

Unfortunately, today is different. The ambiance of this age is ripe for heresy since personal opinion is considered to be more important than truth. The Church has become obsessed with making people feel comfortable, not with truth. The Church has devolved into a radical egalitarianism, and truth has been reduced to its lowest common denominator. Now each individual-with or without his Bible-will decide for himself what truth is; forget the early councils.

In contrast to the heresies, the early fathers understood that Christology was at the heart of redemption, that who Christ was determined whether man was redeemed or not. Their constant watchword was "what is not assumed [in the incarnation] is not redeemed." Thus if Christ had not assumed full humanity (sin excepted), we would have no redemption. Some said that He did not have a human will in the incarnation (heresy of monothelitism), which would mean that man's will was not redeemed. Others had said that Christ had not assumed a rational human soul (heresy of Apollinarism); thus man's soul was not redeemed.

This worked the other way also. The early Church fathers recognized that if Christ had not been fully God and functioning fully as God, there could be no reconciliation of God and man, no infinite merit to what Christ had done, but only the work of a man. At the Council of Ephesus, therefore, the fathers clearly stated in A.D. 431: "If anyone shall say that Jesus as man is only energized by the Word of God, and that the glory of the only-begotten is attributed to Him as something not properly His: let him be anathema" (emphasized added). Again, they proclaimed: "If any man shall say that the one Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Holy Spirit, so that He used through Him a power not His own and from Him received power against unclean spirits and power to work miracles before men and shall not rather confess that it was His own Spirit through which He worked these divine signs; let him be anathema" (emphasis added).

Anything less than one who functioned fully as man and fully as God in one Person would leave us without redemption. He had to be man to die for our sins. He had to be God to give infinite value to His work. He had to be one person to bring God and man together. There could be no compromise between the two natures lest He become a hybrid of deity and humanity and not really either one, but each nature must be fully what it was before the union.

But let us consider some of the modern heresies about Christ, which are just the old ones updated. First, in the early part of this century, we saw the beginning of the "search for the historical Jesus" movement, which continues today, though sometimes under a different label (We are now in the Third Quest.). The four Gospels were not considered reliable, but had to be demythologized to get to the "real," human Jesus. These men wanted just a human Jesus, much like themselves, creating a more palatable and benign Jesus after their own image, attractive to all, threatening to none. They did not want the supernatural, divine Son of God who was Virgin born, and who would meet them in judgment at the Last Day.

Second, one well-known twentieth-century theologian wrote a book shortly before he died espousing Christ as two persons, the ancient Nestorian heresy. He railed against the early fathers: "However distasteful it may be to those students whose knowledge is confined to fifteen minutes of a broader lecture in the Systematic Theology class, and all the more distasteful to the professor who knows little more than those fifteen minutes, they must be forced to acknowledge that the Chalcedonian bishops and the later theologians were talking non-sense, because their terms had no sense at all."1 But Chalcedon was the great council that confirmed Ephesus where in turn Nestorius was condemned.

In Nestorianism we have a moral cooperation between the human Jesus and the divine Son but not a hypostatic union of natures in one Person, hence two persons were associated with one body. Here the Word was not made man, not born of the Virgin, but united with a man by indwelling him, much like prophets of old had God indwelling them. In this view, salvation is a moral cooperation between man and God, not a work of the God-Man alone. Since the Word did not become man, there is no revelation of God personally, only a veiled, vague sense of Him through some man called Jesus. But Chalcedon proclaimed that God became man, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity adding to His divine Person sinless humanity, born of the Virgin Mary. Man is in a hopeless, sinful estate, and the God-Man rescues him and reveals God perfectly. Indeed, he who seen Jesus has seen the Father (John 14:9).

Third, we have our Arians, those who deny the deity of Christ altogether, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, the word-faith movement,2 and the Mormons who deny everything possible. In Arianism, Christ was a created being, not eternal, and not equal with the Father. In Arianism, salvation is worked out by man under the watchful eye of God. Indeed, man can be god. There is no reconciliation of man with God since there is no real union of God and man in one person. Thus salvation is eliminated. If Christ is only a creature, God is not revealed, but a wholly other being. Thus God is eliminated.

Fourth, the most popular heresy of the Church today is a somewhat new twist on Arianism. Kenosis has several variations. There is full kenosis that teaches that Christ ceased to be God altogether at His "incarnation." What happened to the Trinity during this "suspended animation" is not usually addressed, but this radical form is usually taught by liberals.

A more subtle but no less deadly version, usually taught by evangelicals, is that He did not function fully as God at the "incarnation" but gave up the use of His divine attributes. Then after (!) the incarnation, Jesus took up the full use of His divine attributes once again. Of course we must ask when the incarnation ended. Indeed, is not Christ still the God-Man in heaven today so that the incarnation is permanent?

One evangelical kenotic theologian states: "[Jesus] did, however, limit himself to exercising [omnipresence] only in connection with the restrictions imposed by a human body, which meant that he could be in only one physical location at a time. . . ."3 Consider the implications of this statement. Besides the fact that God cannot cease to be God or cease to function as God (His nature cannot change), this version of kenosis is presenting incarnation by subtraction rather than by addition. Indeed, kenosis is incarnation by deicide! The Church and Holy Scripture, however, have taught that the second Person of the Trinity added to His divine person a perfect human nature while not sacrificing anything of His deity. Again this theologian states: "Perhaps, at least for part of his [Jesus'] life, he even gave up the consciousness that he had such [divine] capabilities and had exercised them with the Father and the Holy Spirit prior to the incarnation"4 (emphasis added). Can it get any worse? The Son was God while on earth; He just forgot about it!

The implications of the ancient but modern deviations are also heretical. Sin has only finite implications since Christ did not need to function as the infinite God to accomplish our salvation. The essence of the Trinity is fatally compromised with one Member whose divine nature changed, who forgot who He was, and who was impotent as God while on earth. The work of the Trinity is also fatally compromised as now there is no cooperation of the Three Persons in redemption.5 Indeed, we have no reconciliation of God and man for there is no meaningful union of God and man in Christ. What is given with one hand ("He was God while on earth") is taken back with the other hand ("He did not function as God"). We must lovingly stand with Chalcedon for truth regarding kenosis: This is an updated Arian heresy that robs people of their salvation.

If there was ever a need for a second Reformation, it is today, and this Reformation must begin where the first one did: with the Church's stand for truth and with the Christ of the Councils and of the Bible. We must not invent a new "Jesus" for each succeeding generation, but proclaim the old, revealed Jesus, who never changes (Heb. 13:8). The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church that proclaims Christ as the Son of God!

  1. Gordon Clark, The Incarnation, p. 75.
  2. Some of the leaders in this movement are Kenneth Hagen, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Charles Capps, Fred Price, and their ultimate source was E. W. Kenyon who died some years ago.
  3. From Millard J. Erickson, The Word Became Flesh, p. 549.
  4. Ibid., p. 550.
  5. We could also say that the sacraments are fatally compromised. Since there was no meaningful divine presence in Christ, how could a lone man accomplish salvation? It was a physical work without God involved personally. By analogy the sacraments would be empty physical elements with no divine presence making then means of grace.

The Rev. Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw is Academic Dean; Professor of Holy Scripture & Biblical Languages.
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Cranmer Theological House. Permission to reproduce all or part of this article is granted for PRIVATE USE ONLY on condition that the author receives full acknowledgement.

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