Fleshing Out the Distinctions: Some Implications of Common Evangelical Beliefs Surrounding the Atonement

Two posts ago, I attempted to give a quick overview of some of the doctrinal underpinnings of Orthodox understandings of the Atonement. Whether or not I expressed it well, key to my discussion was the Orthodox attempt to hold several core theological beliefs together. First, Orthodox are committed to believing in the immutability of God. Secondly, Orthodox are committed to believing that Jesus Christ is "theanthropos," the "God-man." As a part of this belief, we also assert that Christ's two natures, human and divine, are each fully complete and unconfused with each other, such that he can be said to possess a complete divine nature, as the Father does, and a complete human nature, as Adam does, and not any sort of distorted admixture of the two. Third, Orthodox are committed to the invincibility and impassibility of the Divine Nature. That is, God is by nature not able to be harmed or to be caused to suffer. We believe that each of these beliefs can be found in the Scriptures, and that they were explicitly or implicitly a part of the original gospel proclamation of the Christian Church.

Evangelicals as a group believe many good and right things about God. Certainly, they are much better students of the Scriptures than are their liberal Protestant counterparts. Moreover, by some act of God's mercy, they also nearly universally uphold many of the doctrinal formulae which were promulgated by the ancient Ecumenical Councils, though they nearly always reject the authority of these councils themselves as binding upon their faith (inasmuch as they are even aware that the councils ever took place).

As such, I can say with confidence that Evangelicals as a block believe in the Holy Trinity, in the two natures of Christ, in God's omnipotence and in his omnipresence. Moreover, I think it would also be appropriate to say that Evangelicals believe in God's immutability, though this is an aspect of God that I have only rarely heard discussed in evangelical circles.

So I think that we can say that, on the surface of it, there is a great commonality between Orthodox and Evangelical believers on many central Christian teachings.

Nevertheless, while Evangelicals have many of the right words and ideas, they are often combined together in ways that the ancient Fathers explicitly rejected as heretical.

Perhaps the most common Evangelical confusion relates to something at the very center of the faith: the Incarnation. What does it mean when we say that the Son of God became a man? What does it mean when we say he has two natures?

Obviously, Evangelicals have the same words as we do about these doctrines, but what content do they fill their words with? Generally speaking, I find that most Evangelicals (including myself when I was one) do not understand phrases like "perfect God and perfect man" in the Orthodox manner. This is perhaps most clearly borne out in their language about the Atonement.

In referencing the Atonement, many Evangelicals speak about Christ's death culminating in "God being ripped from God." Using texts such as 2 Cor 5:21, wherein we read that the Father made Christ "to be sin, who knew no sin," and Hab 1:13, wherein we read that God's eyes are "too pure to look upon evil," they assert that the Father somehow "turned away" from his Son in his wrath toward the sin his Son was bearing, separating them and allowing his Son to go down to the dead.

However, in this view, we see something which is clearly not the Orthodoxy of the Fathers. To the Fathers, Christ is truly God. And to be truly God implies that one has the same nature or essence as God (i.e. the Father). But as we have already seen, Evangelical theology embraces many Orthodox doctrines about God, including for instance God's omnipresence and his inability to be harmed or killed. So what do we mean by the Incarnation? What do we mean by the death of Christ?

For Evangelicals, the answer seems to be that Christ, in the humiliation of his Incarnation, ceases to be God in the same way in which the Father is God. That is, Christ becomes truly localized and truly mortal without retaining the fullness of his divine nature, consubstantial to the Father's. Thus, whereas before the Incarnation, Christ is suspending the world with the Father and the Spirit by the power of his omnipresent Godhead, after the Incarnation, the Son ceases to hold the world in place and such duties fall entirely on the Father and the Spirit. Thus, the Son's essence changes in the Incarnation, what his divinity consists of changes, because the Evangelical probably cannot say that Christ, having become incarnate is still omnipresent and still upholding the universe with the Father and the Spirit. And even if he can say at the moment of Christ's Incarnation that he is still with the Father, the fact that he teaches that the Son and the Father are separated at the cross clearly reveals that the Incarnation has caused the Son to cease to have at least one property of divinity, because if he were still with the Father (and perichoretically "in" the Father), then he could not be "separated" from the Father.

I am in no way attempting to engage in a battle of ancient heresy name-calling. I can't stand it when Calvinists call virtually everyone they disagree with "Pelagians" for one reason or another, and I am similarly irritated by Orthodox and Catholics who engage in the same sort of thing. Nevertheless, I think it is important to point out that this Evangelical theology has much in common with the some of the worst elements of the ancient Monophysite heresy. That is, there is a failure to clearly distinguish Christ's natures, and this results in a sort of belief in the incarnate Christ as not God, but as a demigod. God cannot perish and God cannot cease to be in any place, because all places constantly have their being in him. If Jesus' divinity truly is the same divinity, "of one essence" with the divinity of the Father, then he cannot cease to be everywhere, and more than everywhere, he cannot cease to be in the Father just as the Father is in him.

Beyond this, this probable, latent Monophysitism in Evangelical theology challenges the ancient teaching on the immutability of God. If Christ is God in the same way that the Father is God, how can he give up his omnipresence, and, in the Atonement, his position "in" the Father and still remain of one essence or nature with the Father? The answer is that he cannot. Therefore, the best that the Evangelical who wishes to retain the "God ripped from God" narrative can say is that Christ is not of the same essence, but, like the extreme minority position at Nicea, that Christ has a "similar" essence to that of the Father. It is similar but not the same, for if it were the same it could not change, it could not cease to be everywhere, and it could not cease to be in the Father.

There are no doubt a number of other very important issues surrounding the Atonement and how Orthodox and Evangelicals understand it which I should write about, but this is probably long enough for one blog post, especially a post so very dense as this one. As a disclaimer to Evangelicals who I hope may read this, please know that it is not my intention to pleasure my sinful pride with triumphalism or to falsely exaggerate differences for some unholy end. It is my intention for you as it is for myself that we share in one true faith, worshiping the one Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who is revealed in the Holy Scriptures. There are in fact serious and wide divides between us, which I have alleged come from a common Evangelical misunderstanding of the nature of Christ's divinity. This misunderstanding gravely wounds Evangelical theology throughout a great portion of its content, as I may make plain in other posts if the Lord so blesses me with time and inspiration. The most important thing is that we be right about who God is. Everything else flows from that.

Grace in Jesus Christ,

Ignatius Edward Hunter