Christ’s Humanity in Current

and Ancient Controversy:

Fallen or Not?
Christ’s Humanity in Current
and Ancient Controversy:
Fallen or Not?

E. Jerome Van Kuiken

Bloomsbury T&T Clark

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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 Contents

Abbreviations ix
Acknowledgements xii

Introduction: The Falling Out Over Fallenness 1

0.1 Rationale, structure, and subjects of this study 2
0.2 Scholarly antecedents and contributions of this study 3
0.3 Overview of this study 8
0.4 Historical setting of the current debate 9

1 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select

Modern Theologians 13
1.1 Heather and ‘heresy’: Edward Irving 13
1.1.1 Irving on Christ’s fallen flesh: Distinctions
and definitions 14
1.1.2 Irving’s support for his doctrine 19
1.2 Revolutionizing Christology: Karl Barth 21
1.2.1 Tradition, scripture, and theological reasoning 22
1.2.2 Sinful flesh and salvation 23
1.2.3 The ontology of the incarnation 27
1.2.4 A glance backward and forward 30
1.3 Theologian of mediation: Thomas F. Torrance 31
1.3.1 Torrance’s early Christology 32
1.3.2 Christology after Auburn 36
1.3.3 Appeal to scripture 40
1.3.4 Critical retrieval of tradition 41
1.4 The world, the flesh, and the Spirit: Colin Gunton 43
1.4.1 A fallen network 44
1.4.2 Flesh and Spirit 47
1.4.3 Renewing the world 49
1.4.4 A second glance backward and forward 49
vi Contents

1.5 Broadening consensus: Thomas Weinandy 49

1.5.1 Conceiving sinful flesh aright 50
1.5.2 The testimony of the New Testament 51
1.5.3 The testimony of tradition 53
1.5.4 Weinandy’s contributions 55
Conclusion 55

2 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select

Modern Theologians 59
2.1 Exposing Irving’s errings: Marcus Dods 59
2.1.1 Dods’s doctrinal logic 60
2.1.2 Dods’s scriptural support 62
2.1.3 Dods’s patristic support 63
2.2 Descent and development: A. B. Bruce 65
2.2.1 Bruce’s agenda and axioms 65
2.2.2 Christ’s humiliation in historical theology 66
2.2.3 Christ’s unfallen mortality, temptations, and infirmities 68
2.2.4 Bruce’s evolving explanation of flesh and sin 70
2.3 Catalyst for fallenness: H. R. Mackintosh 72
2.3.1 The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ 73
2.3.2 The Christian Experience of Forgiveness 77
2.3.3 Types of Modern Theology 78
2.3.4 Taking stock of transition 79
2.4 The importance of image: Philip E. Hughes 80
2.4.1 Humanity made and marred in God’s image 81
2.4.2 Humanity restored by God’s image 82
2.4.3 Patristic and biblical support 83
2.5 Fallacious fallenness: Donald Macleod 84
2.5.1 Issues of interpretation 85
2.5.2 Faults in reasoning 86
Conclusion 89

3 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness

of Christ’s Humanity 91
3.1 Theology’s Trailblazer: Irenaeus 92
3.1.1 Creation and Fall in the divine economy 93
3.1.2 Salvation through recapitulation 95
 Contents vii

3.1.3 Christ’s flesh and the Fall 96

3.1.4 Christ’s flesh and death 102
3.2 Defending the incarnate God: Athanasius 104
3.2.1 The Word and his flesh 105
3.2.2 Pseudo(?)-Athanasian writings 108
3.3 ‘The unassumed is the unhealed’: Gregory Nazianzen 112
3.3.1 The mind of Christ 113
3.3.2 The epithets of Christ 114
3.4 Imagining incarnation: Gregory Nyssen 117
3.4.1 Srawley’s thesis 118
3.4.2 A response to Srawley 119
3.5 ‘Seal of the Fathers’: Cyril of Alexandria 122
3.5.1 Christ’s ‘fallen body’ 123
3.5.2 Christ’s life-giving flesh 123
Conclusion 126

4 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of

Christ’s Humanity 129
4.1 Pioneer in the West: Tertullian 129
4.1.1 Tertullian’s anthropology 130
4.1.2 Christ’s relation to sin and death 132
4.2 The passionlessness of the Christ: Hilary of Poitiers 134
4.2.1 Defence of Christ’s human impassibility 135
4.2.2 Pauline exegesis 137
4.3 The passions of the Christ: Ambrose 138
4.3.1 Incarnation as identification with our injured state 138
4.3.2 Incarnation as rectification of our fleshly state 141
4.4 Settler of the West’s opinion: Augustine 142
4.4.1 Humanity: Perfection, defection, infection 142
4.4.2 Christ: Originally sinless, actually sinless,
vicariously sinful 145
4.5 Chalcedon and context: Leo the Great 148
4.5.1 The Christmas sermons 149
4.5.2 The Paschal sermons 149
4.5.3 From the First to the Second Tome 151
Conclusion 153
viii Contents

5 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 155

5.1 Righting history: The modern debaters on the fathers 155
5.1.1 Edward Irving 156
5.1.2 Karl Barth 158
5.1.3 T. F. Torrance and Colin Gunton 159
5.1.4 Thomas Weinandy 160
5.1.5 The unfallenness theologians 161
5.1.6 Summary of findings concerning historical claims 162
5.2 Righting theology: Taxonomy 163
5.2.1 Sykes’ taxonomy 163
5.2.2 Hastings’ taxonomy 164
5.2.3 A Sykes-Hastings taxonomy 165
5.3 Righting theology: Terminology 167
5.3.1 ‘Assumed’ 167
5.3.2 ‘Unfallen’ 168
5.3.3 ‘Fallen’ 170
5.3.4 ‘Sinful’ 172
5.3.5 ‘Sinless’ 173
5.3.6 A case study as a summary 174
5.4 Further implications 175
5.4.1 Mariology 175
5.4.2 Hamartiology 176
5.4.3 Sanctification 178
5.4.4 Bibliology 181
5.5 A final word 182

Appendix: Edward Irving’s Patristic Sources 183

Bibliography 189
Index 216
 Abbreviations

Agon. De agone christiano

AMOECT Adv. Marcionem (Oxford Early Christian Texts)
An. De anima
ANF The Ante-Nicene Fathers
Antirrh. adv. Apol. Antirrheticus adversus Apolinarium
CD Church Dogmatics
C. Apoll. Contra Apollinarem
C. Ar. Contra Arianos
C. Eunom. Contra Eunomium by Nyssen
C. Gent. Contra gentes
C. Jul. Contra Julianum
C. Jul. op. imp. Contra secundam Juliani responsionem ­imperfectum opus
Carn. Chr. De carne Christi
Coll. Max. Collatio cum Maximino Arianorum
CW The Collected Works of Edward Irving
Dial. Dialogus cum Tryphone
DSCHT Dictionary of Scottish Church History & Theology
Enchir. Enchiridion
Ep. Epistula
Ep. Adelph. Epistula ad Adelphium
Ep. Epict. Epistula ad Epictetum
Ep. Eust. Epistula ad Eustathiam
Ep. Max. Epistula ad Maximum
Ep. Serap. Epistula ad Serapionem
Ep. Theoph. Epistula ad Theophilum
x Abbreviations

Epid. Epideixis tou apostolikou kērygmatos

ET English Translation
Expl. XII cap. Explicatio Duodecim Capitum
Fid. De fide
Fid. symb. De fide et symbolo
FC The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation
Fund. Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant Fundamenti
Haer. Adv. haereses
Hom. Eccl. Homiliae in Ecclesiastes
Hom. op. De hominis opificio
HTR Harvard Theological Review
IJST International Journal of Systematic Theology
In Jo. Ev. In Johannis Evangelium
Inc. De incarnatione
Inc. unigen. De incarnatione unigeniti
Incarn. De incarnationis dominicae sacramento
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JTS (NS) Journal of Theological Studies New Series
KD Die Kirchliche Dogmatik
LFC A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church: Anterior to
the Division of the East and West
Marc. Adversus Marcionem
Nat. bon. De natura boni contra Manichaeos
NICNT New International Commentary on the New ­Testament
NPNF1 The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series 1
NPNF2 The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series 2
ODCC The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
Or. Oratio
Or. cat. Catechetical Oration
Paen. De paenitentia
 Abbreviations xi

Participatio Participatio: The Journal of the Thomas F. Torrance Theological

Fellowship
Pecc. merit. De peccatorum meritis et remissione
PG Patrologia graeca
PGL Patristic Greek Lexicon
PL Patrologia latina
SC Sources chrétiennes
Serm. Sermones
SJT Scottish Journal of Theology
Spir. De Spiritu Sancto
StPatr Studia Patristica
Tom. Tomus ad Antiochenos
Tr. Tractatus
Tract. Ev. Jo. In Evangelium Johannis tractatus
Trin. De Trinitate
TS Theological Studies
VC Vigiliae christianae
Ver. rel. De vera religione
Vit. Moys. Vita Moysis
WSA The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the twenty-first
century

Unless otherwise noted, all dates are A.D., all scripture quotations are from
the English Standard Version, and all references to Torrance are to Thomas F.
Torrance.
 Acknowledgements

The inception of this project dates to a spring 1998 course in systematic

theology at Wesley Biblical Seminary. My professor and later mentor William
Ury assigned as a textbook T. F. Torrance’s The Mediation of Christ. There I
encountered for the first time Torrance’s claim that God’s Son had assumed a
fallen human nature. In his preface, Torrance mentioned his book’s genesis as
a lecture series given at British Isles Nazarene College and thanked its dean,
his former student T. A. Noble. Little did I know in 1998 that those prefatory
remarks would hint at my own future. A decade later, I began doctoral research
on the relation of the Fall to Christ’s humanity at the now-named Nazarene
Theological College under Dr Noble’s supervision. I owe much gratitude to
him, as well as to my examiners, David Fergusson of New College, Edinburgh
and David Law of the University of Manchester, for their stimulating questions
and encouragement to publish my work.
Research frequently both feels and appears like a solitary endeavour.
In reality, however, it relies upon a relational network. Special thanks go to
indefatigable Oklahoma Wesleyan University librarian Stephanie Leupp; to
Alan Linfield, Donald Macleod, Kevin Chiarot, and the St Louis University
and Oral Roberts University libraries, for sharing resources; to students Billy
Lopez, Giancarlo Sironi-Paris, and Philipp Jahn, for reviewing my work in
modern European languages; to Oklahoma Wesleyan University and The
Wesleyan Church, for financial support; and, supremely, to my parents, wife,
and Saviour.
 Introduction: The Falling Out
Over Fallenness

From the Apostle Paul onward, Christians have expressed the universal
saving significance of Jesus Christ by portraying him as reversing a primeval
fall of humankind into sin and death (e.g. Rom. 5.12-22). However literally
or figuratively theologians have interpreted the Fall, the question, What are
its implications for the status of Christ’s own humanity?, has persisted for
them. Contemporary thinkers who debate this question delineate two broad
perspectives: one asserts, while the other denies, that Christ’s human nature
was in some sense ‘fallen’, perhaps even ‘sinful’. Each perspective’s advocates
claim support from notable earlier theologians, such as the church fathers.1

1
For a sampling of the current debate, see the following: R. L. Sturch, The Word and the Christ: An
Essay in Analytic Christology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), pp. 261–4; G. W. Bromiley, ‘The Reformers
and the Humanity of Christ’, in Perspectives on Christology: Essays in Honor of Paul K. Jewett (eds M.
Shuster and R. Muller; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), pp. 79–104; M. Shuster, ‘The Temptation,
Sinlessness, and Sympathy of Jesus: Another Look at the Dilemma of Hebrews 4:15’, in Shuster and
Muller, Perspectives on Christology, pp. 197–209; T. A. Hart, ‘Sinlessness and Moral Responsibility:
A Problem in Christology’, SJT 48.1 (1995), pp. 37–54; M. M. Adams, What Sort of Human
Nature?Medieval Philosophy and the Systematics of Christology (Milwaukee: Marquette University
Press, 1999); S. Machida, ‘Jesus, Man of Sin: Toward a New Christology in the Global Era’, Buddhist-
Christian Studies 19 (1999), pp. 81–91; K. M. Kapic, ‘The Son’s Assumption of a Human Nature: A
Call for Clarity’, IJST 3.2 (2001), pp. 154–66; C. Gschwandtner, ‘Threads of Fallenness according to
the Fathers of the First Four Centuries’, and J. Paton, ‘Human Nature in the Light of the Incarnation’,
European Explorations in Christian Holiness 2 (2001), pp. 19–40 and 151–65, respectively; O. Crisp,
‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, IJST 6.3 (2004), pp. 270–88; repr. in idem, Divinity
and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007),
pp. 90–117; W. R. Hastings, ‘“Honouring the Spirit”: Analysis and Evaluation of Jonathan Edwards’
Pneumatological Doctrine of the Incarnation’, IJST 7.3 (2005), pp. 279–99; D. Bathrellos, ‘The
Sinlessness of Jesus: A Theological Exploration in the Light of Trinitarian Theology’, Trinitarian
Soundings in Systematic Theology (ed. P. L. Metzger; London: T&T Clark, 2005), pp. 113–26; R. M.
Allen, ‘Calvin’s Christ: A Dogmatic Matrix for Discussion of Christ’s Human Nature’, IJST 9.4 (2007),
pp. 382–97; K. M. Kapic, Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John
Owen (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), pp. 93–104; I. J. Davidson, ‘Pondering the Sinlessness of Jesus
Christ: Moral Christologies and the Witness of Scripture’ and I. A. McFarland, ‘Fallen or Unfallen?
Christ’s Human Nature and the Ontology of Human Sinfulness’, IJST 10.4 (2008), pp. 372–98 and
399–415, respectively; the latter repr. in idem, In Adam’s Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine
of Original Sin (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); R. M. Allen, The Christ’s Faith: A Dogmatic
Account (London: T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 126–35; K. Chiarot, ‘The Non-Assumptus and the Virgin
Birth in T. F. Torrance’, Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 29.2 (2011), pp. 229–44; H.-J. Ahn,
‘The Humanity of Christ: John Calvin’s Understanding of Christ’s Vicarious Humanity’, SJT 65.2
(2012), pp. 145–58; T. A. Noble, Holy Trinity: Holy People. The Theology of Christian Perfecting
2 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

0.1 Rationale, structure, and subjects of this study

Kelly Kapic has described well the significance of the debate over the language
and concepts used of the relationship of the Fall to Christ’s humanity:

Why do the least excitable Christians turn instantly into the most passionate
debaters when the discussion of whether or not the Son assumed a fallen
or unfallen human nature arises? Professional theologians, pastors and
lay people quickly become impassioned because of what they believe is at
stake. … On the one hand, those who seek to affirm that the Son assumed a
fallen human nature (or sinful flesh) are often interpreted as sacrificing the
sinlessness of Jesus and thus leaving believers still in need of a Savior. On the
other hand, those who affirm that the Son assumes an unfallen human nature
(cf., Adam prior to the fall) are often charged with presenting a generic Jesus
who is not truly man, thus losing the soteriological significance of his life,
death, resurrection and ascension. Both parties think nothing less than the
very heart of the gospel is in jeopardy.2

By examining the claims of both sides in the modern debate in relation to

those of the fathers of orthodox Christian theology, the present work aims
to move this crucial debate a step closer towards resolution. The structure of
this study is to present the views of representatives of both camps of modern
debaters, noting particularly their interaction with patristic sources, and
then to examine the most important of these sources so as to allow patristic
theology to arbitrate the historical claims being made in the modern debate.
This structuring is not intended to insinuate that patristic theology is an
unimprovable standard of theological truth. Rather, the purpose is twofold:
first, to determine the degree of accuracy in modern debaters’ handling of
Christian tradition; and secondly, to exploit any patristic insights which may
contribute towards resolving the current debate.

(Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013), ch. 7; M. Habets, Theology in Transposition: A Constructive Appraisal
of T. F. Torrance (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), ch. 7; J. R. Radcliff, Thomas F. Torrance and the
Church Fathers: A Reformed, Evangelical, and Ecumenical Reconstruction of the Patristic Tradition
(Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014), pp.105–9; D. O. Sumner, ‘Fallenness and anhypostasis: A way forward
in the debate over Christ’s humanity’, SJT 67 (2014), pp. 195–212. Cited 19 June 2014. Online: http://
dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0036930614000064; J. C. Clark and M. P. Johnson, The Incarnation of God: The
Mystery of the Gospel as the Foundation of Evangelical Theology (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015), chs 4–5;
M. Habets, ‘The Fallen Humanity of Christ: A Pneumatological Clarification of the Theology of
Thomas F. Torrance’, Participatio 5 (2015), pp. 18–44.
2
Kapic, ‘Assumption’, p. 154 (italics his).
 Introduction: The Falling Out Over Fallenness 3

Representatives of the modern fallenness and unfallenness views3 were

selected for their contributions to the anglophone, mostly Reformed, version
of the debate;4 for their patristic treatments; and for their interactions with one
another, both with members of their own camp and with those on the opposite
side. Additionally, each camp has an equal number of representatives. Those
chosen to present the fallenness view are Edward Irving, Karl Barth, T. F.
Torrance, Colin Gunton, and Thomas Weinandy. The selected unfallenness
proponents are Marcus Dods the Elder, A. B. Bruce, H. R. Mackintosh, Philip
Hughes, and Donald Macleod.
Representatives from the church fathers were determined by the breadth
of reference to them made by both sides in the modern debate. The aim was
to select fathers whom both fallenness and unfallenness advocates agreed
were significant for the debate. In the interest of balance, five Greek and five
Latin fathers were chosen: Irenaeus, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory
Nyssen, and Cyril of Alexandria for the Greeks; Tertullian, Hilary of Poitiers,
Ambrose, Augustine, and Leo the Great for the Latins.

0.2 Scholarly antecedents and contributions

of this study

Due to brevity and differing foci, the literature cited above does not attempt
anything like the burden of this study.5 Five larger works, all but the last
one originating as doctoral studies, do contain significant overlaps with the

3
In Divinity and Humanity, p. 91, Crisp denominates the two sides as the ‘fallenness’ view and the
‘sinlessness’ view, which rather begs the question. In general, fallenness advocates affirm Christ’s
sinlessness (Kapic, ‘Assumption’, pp. 160–6). Following Kapic, Davidson, and McFarland, this study
uses the terms ‘fallenness’ and ‘unfallenness’ for the two camps. The diverse meanings attached by
theologians to these terms will be evaluated in ch. 5.
4
Among other versions of the debate are those noted in Kapic, ‘Assumption’, within Eastern
Orthodox (157–9, nn. 11, 16) and Dutch Reformed milieux (166, n. 42). Roman Catholics who
embrace the fallenness view include Thomas Weinandy (one subject of this study) and H. U. von
Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter (trans. with an introduction by A. Nichols;
Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990; 1st American edn. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000), p. 22. Pace Allen,
‘Calvin’s Christ’, p. 392, n. 50 and The Christ’s Faith, pp. 126–7, various Lutherans subscribe to
the fallenness view, including M. H. Scharlemann, ‘“In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh”’, Concordia
Theological Monthly 32.3 (March 1961), pp. 133–8; W. Pannenberg, Jesus – God and Man (London:
SCM, 1968, 2002), pp. 407–18; and Luther himself, according to D. W. Dorries, Edward Irving’s
Incarnational Christology (Fairfax, VA: Xulon, 2002), p. 229; Clark and Johnson, The Incarnation of
God, pp. 116, 122.
5
Davidson, ‘Pondering’, pp. 397–8, urges further research of the sort embodied in the present study.
4 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

present study. We will examine each of these works in turn so as to indicate

this study’s setting.
Harry Johnson’s 1962 publication of his London University doctoral thesis
asks whether Christ assumed a fallen human nature.6 Johnson surveys the
biblical and historical precedents for an affirmative answer, then concludes
with a constructive articulation of this view’s soteriological value. Particular
points of contact with the present study include Johnson’s brief challenge
to A. B. Bruce’s unfallenness exegesis of Heb. 4.15; the examination of two
church fathers, Gregories Nazianzen and Nyssen, which finds Nazianzen
implicitly and Nyssen explicitly supportive of a fallenness view; and profiles
of eighteen modern fallenness advocates, including Edward Irving, Karl
Barth, and T. F. Torrance. Johnson also tries to trace the lines of influence
among the modern advocates. He claims that while Barth is aware of many
of the earlier advocates, including Irving, whether he is influenced by them
is unclear; Barth himself, though, seems to have influenced Torrance.
Johnson also devotes nine pages to the question of why the fallenness view
historically has endured neglect among theologians. He concludes that the
church has overemphasized Christ’s divinity to the detriment of his true
humanity.7
In the 1980s, two doctoral studies from the University of Aberdeen sought
to demonstrate the consonance of Edward Irving’s fallenness view with Greek
patristic Christology.8 Jacob Nantomah appeals to Irenaeus, Athanasius, and
Nyssen; David Dorries, too, examines these fathers in addition to Nazianzen,
Basil of Caesarea, and Cyril of Alexandria, as well as the reformers Luther
and Calvin. Both Nantomah and Dorries also discuss the objections of Irving’s
opponents, including Marcus Dods the Elder, and both conclude that the

6
H. Johnson, The Humanity of the Saviour: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Human Nature of
Christ in Relation to Original Sin, with Special Reference to its Soteriological Significance (London:
Epworth, 1962).
7
Johnson, Humanity, pp. 120 (Bruce), 129–32 (the Gregories), 151–5 (Irving), 167–70 (Barth, using
only CD I/2), 170–3 (Torrance), 178–85 (lines of influence), 193–202 (neglect of the fallenness
view).
8
J. J. Nantomah, ‘Jesus the God-Man: The Doctrine of the Incarnation in Edward Irving in the Light
of the Teaching of the Church Fathers and Its Relevance for a Twentieth Century African Context’
(unpublished PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1982); D. W. Dorries, ‘Nineteenth Century British
Christological Controversy, Centring upon Edward Irving’s Doctrine of Christ’s Human Nature’
(unpublished PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1987), published as Incarnational Christology.
 Introduction: The Falling Out Over Fallenness 5

objectors were mistaken and that Irving’s Christology is orthodox in light of

the fathers and reformers studied.9
In 1997, Duncan Rankin completed a genetic-historical study at the
University of Edinburgh on T. F. Torrance’s view of Christ’s unity with
humanity.10 In addition to Torrance’s publications, Rankin uses personal
interviews with Torrance; library records of books borrowed by Torrance
during his New College, Edinburgh student days; private correspondence
between Torrance and Karl Barth; and Torrance’s then-unpublished lectures
at Auburn Theological Seminary, USA, and New College.11 Rankin discusses
Torrance’s fallenness view at length, including his interactions on the subject
with Irving, Mackintosh, and Barth. Rankin then compares Torrance’s view
with Athanasius’ and Calvin’s unfallenness views (according to Rankin) and
Barth’s fallenness view.12 Regarding Torrance’s appeal to patristic precedents
for his Christology, Rankin notes various scholars’ claims that Torrance
has distorted the evidence, then concludes that ‘the way ahead for Torrance
and those influenced by him is through, not around, modern patristics and
historical studies’.13 Rankin also questions the adequacy of Torrance’s account
of original sin in relation to Christ. Finally, Rankin uncovers the potential
influence on Torrance of a hitherto unacknowledged source, fallenness
proponent Melville Scott’s Athanasius on the Atonement.14
Lastly, Greek Orthodox priest Emmanuel Hatzidakis published his Jesus:
Fallen? in 2013.15 Concerned by the inroads of Protestant postlapsarian

9
Nantomah, ‘Jesus the God-Man’, chs 4 (objections) and 5 (patristics); Dorries, Incarnational
Christology, sections 3 (patristics) and 5 (objections). Nantomah’s and Dorries’ claims of Irving’s
orthodoxy are repeated uncritically by D. Y. T. Lee, ‘The Humanity of Christ and the Church in
the Teaching of Edward Irving’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Brunel University and London Bible
College, 2002), pp. 5, 49, as well as by P. Elliott, ‘Edward Irving: Romantic Theology in Crisis’
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Murdoch University, 2010), p. 233. Cited 23 September 2011. Online:
http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/2996/(Elliott cites Dorries but not Nantomah).
10
W. D. Rankin, ‘Carnal Union with Christ in the Theology of T.F. Torrance’ (unpublished PhD thesis,
University of Edinburgh, 1997).
11
Among the Auburn lectures, those covering Christology now have been published as T. F. Torrance,
The Doctrine of Jesus Christ (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002); the complete set of New College
lectures has been published as T. F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ and
Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ (ed. R. T. Walker; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2008
and 2009, respectively). Rankin’s study makes use of Torrance’s annotations to his lectures, which do
not appear in the published version.
12
Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, pp. 99–119 (Torrance’s fallenness view); chs 2–4 (Athanasius, Calvin, and
Barth, respectively).
13
Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, pp. 268–70 (quotation from 269–70).
14
Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, pp. 276–9, 294 (original sin); Appendix 13 (Melville Scott).
15
E. Hatzidakis, Jesus: Fallen? The Human Nature of Christ Examined from an Eastern Orthodox
Perspective (Clearwater, FL: Orthodox Witness, 2013).
6 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Christology among some Orthodox theologians, Hatzidakis attempts a

massive refutation based on Orthodox tradition. His central convictions
are twofold: first, Christ’s humanity was so deified by union with the Logos
that it possessed attributes like impeccability, untemptability, immutability,
impassibility, and perfect knowledge and beauty. Secondly, any experiences
of mutability and passibility (maturation, sorrow, suffering, death) in Jesus’
life came only by the express permission of not only his eternal divine will but
also his temporal human will (e.g. Jesus consciously chose to feel hunger in
the desert).16 Hatzidakis refers to a number of modern fallenness proponents
and opponents and church fathers – including all the moderns and fathers
examined in this study – but only superficially.
The above works’ overlaps with the present study do not diminish its
contributions. First, this study gives balanced coverage to both sides of the
modern fallenness debate. Like Johnson, Rankin, and Hatzidakis and unlike
Nantomah and Dorries, this study scrutinizes several modern representatives
of the fallenness view. Like Rankin but unlike the other works, the fallenness
proponents are matched with an equal number of unfallenness advocates.
Furthermore, each side is given a fair hearing. By contrast, Nantomah, despite
stating that he has striven for objectivity, repeatedly argues by impugning
Irving’s critics’ motives.17 Dorries dismisses Marcus Dods the Elder’s extensive
compilation of patristic testimony by appealing to a single alleged factual
error and arguing fallaciously that therefore the whole of Dods’s research
must be suspect.18 Although Dorries examines some of the same fathers as
Dods, Dorries refuses to interact with the details of Dods’s anti-Irving patristic

16
For example, Hatzidakis, Jesus: Fallen?, pp. 4–6, 25–6, 96–102, 106–7, 131–3, 159, 162–6, 186–7, 278,
283–93, 313, 364–92, 442.
17
Nantomah, ‘Jesus the God-Man’, pp. xi–xii (commitment to objectivity), 15, 17–18, 203, 214, 255–6
(ad hominem attacks).
18
‘[Dods’s] liberal use of ancient church authorities gave the appearance of knowledgeable critique.
Yet careful readers should have been warned by telling examples such as the following reference that
indicated that he possessed only a superficial grasp of the issues of doctrine. Here, Dods seemed to
think that the Monothelite heresy originated from a person named Monothelus!’ Dorries proceeds
to quote from M. Dods, ‘Review of New Publications’, Edinburgh Christian Instructor (January
1830), pp. 1–96 (32), in which Dods writes, ‘Monothelus himself – who in this wide world was he?
Never you mind good reader, whoever he was we defy him to have been a more thorough going
Monothelite than [Irving]’ (Incarnational Christology, pp. 369–70). The alleged factual error upon
which Dorries has seized is – in all likelihood – a jest. Dods’s biographer describes him as ‘a man of
deep theological scholarship, and at the same time of irrepressible wit’ (W. G. Blaikie, ‘Dods, Marcus’,
in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–900, 15; n.p. [cited 28 September 2011]. Online: http://
en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dods,_ Marcus_(DNB00).) Sadly, Dods’s humour was lost on Dorries!
 Introduction: The Falling Out Over Fallenness 7

interpretation, which contradicts Dorries’s own pro-Irving argument.19

Hatzidakis argues by means of decontextualized, selective proof texting and
handles his sources monolithically, imposing later Orthodox views (especially
Maximus the Confessor’s, John Damascene’s, and Gregory Palamas’s) onto
earlier church fathers.20 He also errs blatantly and repeatedly in fact and
interpretation.21
Secondly, this study provides more expansive patristic coverage than all
the above works but Hatzidakis’s. Rankin measures the fallenness view against
one father (Athanasius), Johnson against two (the Cappadocian Gregories),
Nantomah, three (Irenaeus, Athanasius, Nyssen), and Dorries, six (Irenaeus,
Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Cyril of Alexandria).22 This study examines
ten fathers. These ten are balanced between five Greek and five Latin fathers,
unlike the previous studies, in which only Greek fathers figured. The Latin
lacuna in Nantomah’s and Dorries’s works is peculiar, in that their intent
is to demonstrate Irving’s orthodoxy via patristic appeal, yet when Irving
himself followed the same strategy, he referred predominantly to the Latin

19
Nantomah’s and Dorries’ fallacies are perpetuated by Lee, ‘Humanity of Christ’, p. 49.
20
For example, he responds to Torrance’s and Weinandy’s pro-fallenness patristic citations simply by
countering with his own citations from the same church fathers and appealing to (later) tradition to
settle the question. Hatzidakis makes little attempt to show how Torrance’s and Weinandy’s citations
may be reconciled with his own so as to render consistent the fathers’ statements (213–15; 346,
353–5, 404, n. 83). Elsewhere, Hatzidakis appeals to Damascene to fix the meaning of Gregory
Nazianzen’s Epistle 101 (360, 362) and misrepresents Tertullian as concurring with later fathers on
Mary’s perpetual virginity (424).
21
Among Hatzidakis’s obvious errors: Karl Barth died in 2007 (11); Colin Gunton and J. B. Torrance
‘rebutted Irving’ (30, n. 35, citing no sources; cf. the present volume’s first chapter to the contrary);
the Reformed doctrine of total depravity means that humans have lost the imago Dei completely (61);
the Nicene Creed attributes ‘unbegottedness’ to Christ (80); Barth taught kenoticism (394–5) and
rejected the Virgin Birth (420); the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception denies Mary’s
need of salvation (416–18); and twentieth-century biblical scholar John Knox was the homonymous
sixteenth-century reformer (429). Hatzidakis’s critics include fellow Orthodox priest A. Kimel,
‘The Prelapsarian Christ’, Eclectic Orthodoxy (19 July 2016); ‘The God-Man Who Freely Wills His
Passions’, Eclectic Orthodoxy (21 July 2016); ‘Would Christ have Died of Natural Causes?’, Eclectic
Orthodoxy (25 July 2016); ‘The God-Man Who Could Not Die’, Eclectic Orthodoxy (31 July 2016);
and ‘When Did Jesus Decide to Die?’, Eclectic Orthodoxy (15 August 2016); n.p. Cited 11 October
2016. Online: https://afkimel.wordpress.com and M. A. Nagasawa, ‘Penal Substitution vs. Medical-
Ontological Substitution: A Historical Comparison’, Nagasawa Family News Pages (26 August 2016),
pp. 1–90 (21–7, 35, 47, 73–86). Cited 27 September 2016. Online: http://nagasawafamily.org/article-
penal-substitution-vs-ontological-substitution-historical-comparison.pdf. Because Hatzidakis’s
work and these responses came to my attention after this study was largely complete, I shall not
engage with them directly in the following chapters. Suffice it to say that the evidence compiled by
this study significantly challenges Hatzidakis’s readings of both ancient and modern figures in the
fallenness debate.
22
Nantomah, ‘Jesus the God-Man’, does touch briefly on Tertullian (225–6, 259) and Cyril of
Alexandria (312).
8 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

fathers.23 Athanasius alone among the Greek fathers studied by Nantomah and
Dorries is referenced also by Irving.24 In the present study, the fathers selected
for examination are those to whom appeal is made by both fallenness and
unfallenness theologians.
Thirdly, this study updates Johnson’s, Nantomah’s, Dorries’s, and Rankin’s
efforts. It includes recent contributors to the fallenness debate, such as Colin
Gunton, Thomas Weinandy, Philip Hughes, and Donald Macleod.25 It also
goes, in Rankin’s words, ‘through, not around, modern patristics and historical
studies’. The field of patristics is blooming with specialized studies in multiple
languages, which this present study harvests.
Finally, while Johnson’s, Nantomah’s, Dorries’s, and Hatzidakis’s concern
to advocate a particular view produces a certain levelling of the differences
among the subjects of their studies, the present study follows Rankin’s lead
by documenting diversity of opinion and relationship, even within the same
camp. This study traces the complex web of relationships among fallenness
proponents, among unfallenness proponents, between fallenness and
unfallenness proponents, among Greek fathers, among Latin fathers, between
Greek and Latin fathers, and between modern proponents of both persuasions
and the fathers.

0.3 Overview of this study

Chapter 1 examines the views of the five selected fallenness advocates.

Similarities, differences, and lines of influence among them are noted, as

23
As noted above, Nantomah glances at Tertullian, to whom Irving also appeals.
24
Irving’s patristic appeal will be documented in Chapter 1 and Appendix. Nantomah’s bibliography,
pp. 379–80, indicates that he did not read the article in which Irving adduces patristic support.
Dorries, though, did: see ‘Nineteenth Century Christological Controversy’, pp. 381–5. Thus
Nantomah was ignorant of, and Dorries ignored, Irving’s appeals to the fathers (both Latin and
Greek). In Edward Irving’s Incarnational Christology, p. 141, n. 47, Dorries does note that Irving uses
Irenaeus’ signature term, ‘recapitulate’, in CW 5, p. 74. Irving, though, may simply be alluding to the
ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι of Eph. 1.10 (Greek), from which text Irenaeus drew the term. In the absence
of any clearer references to Irenaeus in Irving’s corpus, it seems prudent not to presume that Irving
used Irenaeus.
25
After noting Irving’s influence upon Barth, Torrance, Gunton, and Macleod, B.-S. Lee, ‘Christ’s Sinful
Flesh’: Edward Irving’s Christological Theology within the Context of his Life and Times (Newcastle
upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), p. 245, suggests that ‘Irving’s influence on
later theologians would be a valuable subject for a future study’. The present work honours that
suggestion.
 Introduction: The Falling Out Over Fallenness 9

are their appeals to or against the fathers. Chapter 2 treats similarly the five
selected unfallenness theologians. Chapter 3 moves to the five selected Greek
fathers, while Chapter 4 takes up their Latin counterparts. Each of these
patristic chapters considers the similarities, differences, and lines of influence
in patristic views regarding the relationship of the Fall to Christ’s humanity.
Chapter 5 evaluates the data generated by the first four chapters, including the
confusingly divergent uses of key terms like ‘assumed’, ‘unfallen’, ‘fallen’, ‘sinful’,
and ‘sinless’, and offers recommendations regarding terminology and further
theological inquiry.

0.4 Historical setting of the current debate

Before turning our focus to specific modern fallenness proponents and their
opponents, a word regarding the general historical setting of the modern
debate is in order. In his historical survey of the fallenness view, Johnson finds
that the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries witnessed the increasing
emergence of fallenness advocacy in Europe, including, in the lattermost
century, Scottish minister Edward Irving and several continental advocates
listed by Barth in Church Dogmatics I/2. Johnson tracks the modern fallenness
view as far back as Flemish mystic Antoinette Bourignon (1616–80) and notes
a few lines of influence among the various fallenness proponents listed by
Barth.26 Regarding this list, Rankin states that its members ‘appear to have
been influenced through a number of mediating figures by the original insights
of … Bourignon’.27 These insights were well known in Scotland, for they were
condemned as heretical by the Church of Scotland and Irving specifically
sought to distance himself from the charge of Bourginonism.28 The source or
sources of Irving’s own fallenness view remain uncertain.29 The fact that he

26
Johnson, Humanity, pp. 137–67. Barth’s list is found in CD I/2, pp. 154–5.
27
Carnal Union, pp. 249–50, n. 50.
28
E. Irving, The Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine of Our Lord’s Human Nature (London: Baldwin &
Cradock, 1830), pp. 66–7.
29
B.-S. Lee, ‘Christ’s Sinful Flesh’ notes that previous writers have failed to offer a satisfactory account
of the sources of Irving’s Christology (83) and devotes chapter 3 to the subject, focusing on Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and Richard Hooker. Since, however, neither Coleridge nor Hooker attribute
sinfulness to Christ’s flesh, the enigma of Irving’s source for that aspect of his Christology lingers.
One of the earlier writers whose accounts B.-S. Lee adjudges unsatisfactory is D. Lee’s ‘Humanity
of Christ’, which argues that the place of the Logos as the conciliatory principle in Coleridge’s
10 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

and his compatriots and friends John McLeod Campbell and Thomas Erskine
all three advanced a similar doctrine strongly suggests either lines of influence
among them or a common source for their views, although the matter is
much debated.30 Some evidence suggests the later works of Anglican mystic
William Law as the source of Erskine’s fallenness doctrine, and it may be that
these works also influenced Irving and McLeod Campbell.31 Law, in turn, had
studied the writings of German Lutheran mystic and fallenness pioneer Jakob
Boehme (1575–1624),32 whose speculations also influenced other fallenness

philosophical dialectics influenced Irving’s view of sinful flesh and sinless personhood within Christ
(ii, 26, 33–9, 46–7). This argument is not compelling for three reasons. First, Coleridge sees the
dialectical relationship as a symbiosis, not a strife, of opposites (35). Lee, ‘Humanity of Christ’, p. 38,
claims that Irving likewise saw the relationship between Christ’s sinful flesh and sinlessness as a
‘harmony … not a discord’, citing E. Irving, Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, the Form, Fountain Head, and
Assurance to Us of Holiness in Flesh (Edinburgh: John Lindsay, 1831), p. 93. But Irving himself always
asserts a discord, not a harmony, between sinfulness and sinlessness in Christ’s constitution. To cite
evidence strictly from Christ’s Holiness in Flesh: Christ hated and constantly crucified the Adamic
life which he found in his flesh (p. 12); he had to subdue his flesh (23, 38–9, 60); ‘all the evil powers
inherent in flesh’ gathered against him, dismaying him (28). Besides, Irving was a Romantic, not
least in Christology: his Jesus is a hallowed Childe Harold, alienated, exiled, and striving against
inner and outer opposition (Elliott, ‘Edward Irving’, pp. 256–64; cf. Lee, ‘Christ’s Sinful Flesh’,
pp. 11, 50). Secondly, Coleridge disagreed with Irving’s Christology (Graham McFarlane, Christ and
the Spirit: The Doctrine of the Incarnation according to Edward Irving [Carlisle: Paternoster, 1996],
p. 167; Elliott, ‘Edward Irving’, pp. 121, 152–3, 160; Lee, ‘Humanity of Christ’, p. 104). Thirdly, there
is evidence that Irving held to a fallenness Christology prior to meeting Coleridge (see below for
further details).
30
Cf. P. K. Stevenson, God in Our Nature: The Incarnational Theology of John McLeod Campbell
(Bletchley, UK: Paternoster, 2004), pp. 183–5; D. Horrocks, Laws of the Spiritual Order: Innovation
and Reconstruction in the Soteriology of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen (Bletchley, UK: Paternoster,
2004), pp. 187–93; T. F. Torrance, Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), p. 287; McFarlane, Christ and the Spirit, p. 169; N. R. Needham,
‘Erskine, Thomas’, in DSCHT (eds D. F. Wright, N. M. de S. Cameron, and D. C. Lachman; Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1993), pp. 302–3; idem, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen: His Life and Theology 1788–1837
(Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1990), pp. 126, 474–7; G. M. Tuttle, John McLeod Campbell on
Christian Atonement: So Rich a Soil (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1986), pp. 39, 67–8, 147, n. 18.
31
Horrocks, Laws, pp. 180–90, notes that Law’s later books, The Spirit of Prayer (London: M. Richardson,
1749/1750) and The Spirit of Love (London: G. Robinson & J. Roberts, 1752/1754) taught a Boehme-
inspired fallenness view and that Erskine read these books. Horrocks hypothesizes that Coleridge,
who mentored Irving and who thought highly of Law’s writings, may have recommended them to
Irving, thus potentially exposing Irving to Law’s fallenness view. Irving first met Coleridge between
7 and 23 July 1823 (Elliott, ‘Edward Irving’, p. 121), but Irving’s first recorded reference to Christ’s
having ‘sinful flesh’ appears in a sermon on John the Baptist (CW 2, p. 98; Lee, ‘Christ’s Sinful Flesh’,
p. 156) dating to the winter months at the beginning of 1823 (CW 2, pp. 191–2; W. Wilks, Edward
Irving: An Ecclesiastical and Literary Biography [London: William Freeman, 1854], pp. 33, 35, 44.
Cited 20 April 2014. Online: http://books.google.com), thus eliminating Coleridge (though not
Law) as a source of Irving’s fallenness Christology. For Coleridge’s relationship with Irving and
suggestions of specific Coleridgean influences upon Irving, see Wilks, Edward Irving, pp. 149–52,
218; Elliott, ‘Edward Irving’, ch. 4; Lee, ‘Christ’s Sinful Flesh’, ch. 3.
32
Horrocks, Laws, pp. 180–90; E. W. Baker, A Herald of the Evangelical Revival: A Critical Inquiry into
the Relation of William Law to John Wesley and the Beginnings of Methodism (New-World Library;
London: Epworth, 1948), pp. 36–7, 109–16, 128–39. According to H. J. Martenson, Jacob Boehme
(1575–1624): Studies in His Life and Teaching by Hans J. Martenson (1808–1884) Primate Bishop of
Denmark (trans. T. Rhys Evans; Salisbury Square, UK: Rockliff, 1949), Boehme taught an eternal
tension within God of a light principle of love and a dark principle of desire which, in God, is not
 Introduction: The Falling Out Over Fallenness 11

proponents and the whole of nineteenth-century Germany.33 This fact may

help to account for the interest in the fallenness view among the nineteenth-
century German and Dutch theologians listed by Barth. This, then, is the
milieu in which our detailed study begins.

evil but is continually suppressed. This dark principle, however, becomes rebellious and is actualized
as Satan (57, 59). In the Incarnation, Christ embodies both the light and the dark principles, as well
as the world-principle with its worldly cravings, but he rightly subjects the latter two principles to
the light principle (159–60; cf. 164). To accomplish God’s plan to subordinate the human self to the
divine Spirit, Christ had to die ‘that He might vanquish [the self] from within. His outward body,
which was in the likeness of sinful flesh, must die’ (160).
33
Boehme influenced Bourignon’s disciple, Peter Poiret (57), and the theosophist Oetinger, who in
turn had contact with J. K. Dippel (17, 157–8), according to W. R. Ward, Early Evangelicalism: A
Global Intellectual History, 1670–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Johnson,
Humanity, includes Poiret (139–42) and Dippel (145–8) in his list of fallenness proponents. Ward,
Early Evangelicalism, p. 17, notes that early nineteenth-century Germany was much influenced by
Boehme (on Boehme himself see pp. 21–2).
12
 1

The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View

among Select Modern Theologians

University of Edinburgh theologian Hugh Ross Mackintosh famously (if

ethnocentrically) declared, ‘Theology is created in Germany, corrupted in
America and corrected in Scotland.’1 The modern fallenness Christology,
however, is raised in Great Britain, revived in Germany (and Switzerland),
returned to Britain, and received in America. As we trace the course of this
doctrine, we shall note the biblical and historical (particularly patristic)
sources to which its selected proponents appeal, as well as their theological
rationales. The object of this chapter is to present the selected theologians’
views sympathetically; therefore, critique will be limited.

1.1 Heather and ‘heresy’: Edward Irving

In the 1820s and 1830s, the Church of Scotland faced claims by one of its sons
that Christ’s human nature was ‘fallen’, indeed ‘sinful’. The advocate was Annan
native and controversial celebrity minister Edward Irving (1792–1834), whose
famed rhetorical prowess drew large crowds each week to the National Scotch
Church in London.2 For that doctrine, Irving was found guilty of heresy by

1
D. Graves, ‘Hugh Ross Mackintosh’s Scottish Theology’, n.p. Cited 25 March 2011. Online: http://
www.christianity.com/ChurchHistory/11630761/.
2
Biographical data on Irving may be found in the following sources: T. Grass, The Lord’s Watchman
(Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2011); N. R. Needham, ‘Irving, Edward’, DSCHT (eds D. F. Wright,
N. M. de S. Cameron, and D. C. Lachman; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), pp. 436–7; A. Dallimore,
The Life of Edward Irving: Fore-runner of the Charismatic Movement (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth,
1983); A. L. Drummond, Edward Irving and His Circle (London: James Clarke, 1936); Wilks, Edward
Irving. On Irving’s popularity as an orator, see C. G. Strachan, The Pentecostal Theology of Edward
Irving (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1973), pp. 25, 209, n. 8; Needham, ‘Irving’, p. 436; Wilks,
Edward Irving, ch. 3.
14 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

the London Presbytery in 18303 and again by the Annan Presbytery in 1833,
at which time he was deposed from the ministry.4 Irving himself returned the
charge of heresy upon his opponents, accusing them of implying Gnosticism,
Manichaeism, Eutychianism, and Monothelitism by claiming that Christ’s
humanity was immortal, incorruptible, and sinless.5 In the years leading up
to his defrocking, he published prolifically in defence of his doctrine,6 to an
exposition of which we now turn.

1.1.1 Irving on Christ’s fallen flesh: Distinctions

and definitions
Misinterpreting Irving is easy unless one heeds certain distinctions and
definitions.7 The first crucial distinction is between the Trinitarian persons
of the Son and the Spirit. Irving rejects as Eutychian and apotheosizing any
notion that Christ’s humanity was sanctified by its union with the divine Son.8
Rather, the Son’s role in the Incarnation was to supply personhood for the
human nature (the doctrine of anhypostasia) and to accommodate his divine
will to direct his human will faithfully within the constraints of the latter’s
finitude (the doctrines of kenosis and Dyothelitism).9 By contrast, it was the

3
Dallimore, Life of Edward Irving, p. 96; Strachan, Pentecostal Theology, pp. 43–5.
4
Dallimore, Life of Edward Irving, pp. 148–9; Strachan, Pentecostal Theology, pp. 193–9.
5
CW 5, pp. 215–16; cf. 4, 126–7; CW 1, pp. 624, 644.
6
E. Irving, The Doctrine of the Incarnation Opened in Six Sermons (first published in 1828, now in
CW 5); ‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, and ‘On the True Humanity of Christ’, Morning Watch
1 (1829), pp. 75–99, 421–45, respectively; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine (1830); The Opinions
Circulating Concerning Our Lord’s Human Nature, Tried by the Westminster Confession of Faith
(Edinburgh: John Lindsay, 1830); with T. Carlyle, The Doctrine Held by the Church of Scotland
Concerning the Human Nature of Our Lord, As Stated in Her Standards (Edinburgh: John Lindsay,
1830); and Christ’s Holiness in Flesh (1831).
7
Lee, ‘Humanity of Christ’, pp. 48–9. Dods, ‘Review’, pp. 43, 45, complains about how Irving redefines
terms and uses the same terms with different meanings at different points.
8
CW 5, pp. 123–4. Indeed, on p. 150, Irving insists that God the Son was incapable of doing what God
the Spirit did to Christ’s flesh:
Was ever the weakness of flesh so proved as by this, that the personality of the Son joined to
it could not strengthen it, without the continual energising of the Holy Ghost? Was ever the
sinfulness and mortality of the flesh so proved as by this, that the Holy One could not keep it from
sin and from corruption but by the operation of the Holy Ghost?
9
CW 5, pp. 3–5, 87, 155, 159–60, 164–8, 439–40; ‘On the True Humanity of Christ’, pp. 427–8,
439–40; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. vii–1. Irving has a kenotic view of the Incarnation
(Dorries, Edward Irving’s Incarnational Christology, pp. 88–97). Nevertheless, Christ remains fully
God as well as fully human according to Irving, The Day of Pentecost, Or, The Baptism with the Holy
Ghost (London: Baldwin & Cradock, 1831), pp. 37, 76. Cf. CW 2, pp. 194–5.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 15

Spirit who, under the Son’s direction, empowered, sanctified, and sustained
Christ’s humanity so that his human will harmonized with his divine will.10
That the Spirit’s constant working was required indicates the nature of
Christ’s humanity as ‘flesh’. Under this term are included all the effects of the
Fall: the necessity of suffering, death, and corruption;11 ‘evil propensities’,12 also
described as the law of, lust of, or will of the flesh;13 and liability to temptation
by means of all the above.14 Irving uses the word ‘flesh’ with two referents:
first, as synonymous with ‘body’. Thus one of his early sermons portrays the
human souls of Christ and of Christians as holy while their flesh is rebellious
until resurrection.15 Likewise, in a March 1829 journal article, Irving denies
that ‘the Holy Ghost in the conception did impenetrate every particle of his
[Jesus’] body, so as that, from being under the condition and law of sin, it
should be under the condition and law of holiness …. For if in his conception
the particles of his flesh were changed from unholy to holy, from mortal to
immortal, then what was left to be done at the resurrection?’16 Secondly, Irving
applies the term ‘flesh’ to the totality of fallen human nature, both body and
soul. He admits that some of his earlier writings give the impression that only
Christ’s body was subject to the law of sin and death, but in fact ‘we can assert
the sinfulness of the whole, the complete, the perfect human nature, which He
took, without in the least implicating Him with sin’.17

10
CW 5, pp. 3–4, 134, 160–2; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. vii–1; Day of Pentecost, pp. 16–17,
26–7, 64–5, 74–8; cf. CW 4, pp. 537–9; J. Purves, ‘The Interaction of Christology and Pneumatology
in the Soteriology of Edward Irving’, Pneuma 14.1 (1992), pp. 81–90.
11
CW 5, p. 136; ‘On the True Humanity of Christ’, p. 424; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, p. 151.
12
CW 5, pp. 169–70 (Irving is here describing Christ’s ‘fallen manhood’); cf. ‘On the True Humanity
of Christ’, pp. 424–5. As Dorries puts it, there is in Christ’s flesh an ‘inherent movement towards sin’
(Edward Irving’s Incarnational Christology, p. 98; cf. 403).
13
CW 5, p. 320; ‘On the True Humanity of Christ’, pp. 424–6, 432; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine,
pp. 22, 25; Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. 23. Christ had ‘a law of sin and death to overcome, a will of
the flesh to keep obedient to the will of the Spirit in his mind’ (Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, 60). Irving
allows that before the Fall, Adam imaged God in the flesh. Since the Fall, though, flesh is under the
law of sin and death (Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, 44–5).
14
‘On the True Humanity of Christ’, pp. 424–7; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, p. 20.
15
CW 5, pp. 126–8, 161–3, 320, 330–1, 335 (Christ); 145–6, 335 (Christians).
16
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, p. 97.
17
CW 5, p. 565; cf. 265. Here ‘perfect’ means ontological completeness (lacking neither body nor
soul), not moral perfection. Thus Irving can write of Christ’s choice both ‘through the faculties of
the human soul, to commune with every impious, ungodly, and blasphemous chamber of the fallen
intellect and feeling of men’ and also to ‘endure such a pressure of iniquity as His human nature, His
sin-bearing body, brought Him into the sense, feeling, bondage, and suffering of ’ (CW 5, 269–70,
emphases mine).
16 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Irving’s last statement above may seem self-contradictory,18 unless one

recognizes that he carefully distinguishes substance (‘nature’ in the quote
above) from person (as indicated by the pronoun ‘Him’). Irving explains in
the preface to one of his books, ‘Whenever I attribute sinful properties and
dispositions and inclinations to our Lord’s human nature, I am speaking of
it considered as apart from Him, in itself.’19 More than once, Irving applies to
Christ the ‘Yet not I, but sin that dwelleth in me’ of Rom. 7.17 to express this
distinction.20 Although Christ’s flesh, like ours, willed to commit every kind
of sin, and ‘did carry up to the mind every form of seduction’, yet in Christ’s
person were ‘no concupiscence, no thought or meditation of evil, no indwelling
of lust, no abiding of anger or malice or hatred’; rather, he disciplined his body
to obey God.21
To preserve Christ’s personal sinlessness despite his sinful human
substance, Irving idiosyncratically differentiates three kinds of sin: original
sin, constitutional sin, and actual sin.22 Original sin is Adam’s wilful forfeiting
of his created state, the guilt for which is shared by all naturally generated
human persons, whom God holds responsible for not being the persons
he created them to be. The divine Son, being uncreated, is not under this
responsibility, nor does he assume it in the Incarnation, for no human
person is generated in the virginal conception, but rather the Son unites with

18
As Dallimore, Life of Edward Irving, p. 79, claims.
19
Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, p. vii. In CW 5, pp. 564–5, Irving repudiates the equation of ‘soul’
with ‘person’. Rather, ‘person’ is what links the psychosomatic unity of one’s nature to God.
20
CW 5, p. 320; ‘On the True Humanity of Christ’, p. 426; Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. xxx; cf. Strachan,
Pentecostal Theology, p. 28. In Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, pp. 42–4 (cf. vii–viii), Irving clarifies his past
use of this verse (emphases his):
I think it is not proper to apply these words [from the verses surrounding Rom. 7.17] unto
Christ, in whom the law of the flesh, though ever present, was ever present in the condition
of impotence and death, and never arose into the state of warfare there described, being kept
down by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the hands of the Son of Man …. [By using Rom.
7.17,] I did not mean, that sin had any activity or potency, that the I ever sinned, or any thing
which the I covers, – any member of the flesh or of the mind, no, not one hair of his head ….
We say, that it was flesh sinful in its own properties, converted into holy flesh by its union with
his person. … If it be applied to Christ, it is only as a temptation, and not an experience; as a
consciousness, but not a consenting; as a liability, but not as a thing admitted or permitted ever
to possess him.
21
‘On the True Humanity of Christ’, pp. 426–7; cf. Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, p. 7: Christ
assumed our nature ‘without meditation of evil, without indulgence of concupiscence’. The evil and
concupiscence were ever present in his human nature but were restrained, not entertained, by his
person.
22
Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. 10 (cf. Dorries, Incarnational Christology, 83).
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 17

anhypostatic human nature by the Spirit’s power. Thus Christ is shielded from
the guilt of original sin.23
The consequence of Adam’s sin, however, is constitutional sin – the law of
sin and death at work in the flesh. By taking flesh from a mother who herself
shares humanity’s fallen, sinful substance, Christ apportions to himself a part
of the common mass of sinful human nature, thereby sharing in the collective
sins and carnal temptations of the whole race,24 as well as in the guilt of having
a fallen nature.25 Yet the divine will in Christ, being immutably immune from
temptation, ever wills the will of his Father, while the Holy Spirit continuously
neutralizes the sinful impulses of Christ’s flesh, converting them into holy
thinking, willing, and doing. By these means, Christ never falls into actual
sin, which is voluntary transgression of God’s law.26 The distinction between
constitutional and actual sin appears when Irving writes: ‘Sin, in a nature,
is its disposition to lead the person away from God; sin in a person, is the
yielding thereto.’27
Although Irving’s doctrine of the Incarnation demands these fine
hamartiological distinctions, his doctrine of the Atonement requires him to

23
CW 5, pp. 159–60; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. 23, 80–7; Opinions Circulating, p. 58; Christ’s
Holiness in Flesh, pp. 3–4. McFarlane, Christ and the Spirit, p. 150, claims that, for Irving, Christ
shares in original guilt but not original sin. Given Irving’s categories, it is more accurate to say that
Christ’s humanity (not Christ) shared in constitutional guilt (not original guilt) – that is, his human
nature is guilty but his person is not.
24
CW 4, pp. 340–1; CW 5, pp. 115, 153–4, 174.
25
In Day of Pentecost, Irving claims that the ‘natural life’ of Christ’s humanity was ‘a thing doomed for
having once sinned in Adam’. God’s justice ‘required death for sin; not the death of that person only
who had sinned, but the death of that form of being, of that form of life, in what persons soever it
may appear’. Therefore Christ died in order to satisfy God’s just verdict on the guilty human nature
which he bore sinlessly (8–9). This claim will appear to contradict Irving’s denial that Christ shared
in original sin unless one keeps in mind Irving’s distinction between person and nature: original
sin and guilt, in Irving’s usage, applies only to persons; constitutional sin and guilt apply to fallen
human nature. Thus Christ’s virginal conception did not remove original sin and guilt either from
his anhypostatic humanity (pace Dorries, Incarnational Christology, 98) or from his divine person
(pace Lee, ‘Humanity of Christ’, 39, n. 213), neither of which had original sin and guilt from which
to be purified. Rather, the virginal conception removed any possibility for original sin in the man
Jesus by uniting his humanity with an impeccable divine person, although his humanity retained
constitutional sin and guilt until death. Cf. M. Paget, ‘Christology and Original Sin: Charles Hodge
and Edward Irving Compared’, Churchman 121.3 (2007), pp. 229–48 (242): ‘Irving establishes
Christ’s identity with humanity in guilt via an Augustinian realist model of guilt. Christ [better:
Christ’s humanity] is guilty, without being implicated in original sin’ (cf. 246, n. 67’s critique of
McFarlane, Christ and the Spirit).
26
‘On the True Humanity of Christ’, pp. 425–7; Doctrine Held by the Church of Scotland, p. 44; cf. CW 5,
pp. 126–7, 171–4. The claim in Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, p. 91, that fallenness proponents like
Irving deny Christ’s impeccability is false.
27
CW 5, p. 565. Nantomah, ‘Jesus the God-Man’, quotes this line (125), but inaccurately claims that
Irving sees fallen human nature as guiltless (241) and merely sin-prone rather than truly sinful
(100–1, 257).
18 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

integrate the three forms of sin. On Irving’s account, the presence of sin in one
of its forms in one member of humanity, namely Christ, enables him to atone
for sin in all its forms in all of humanity,28 for sin is fundamentally a ‘simple,
single, common power … diffused throughout, and present in, the substance
of flesh of fallen human nature’.29 By ontologically bearing constitutional sin,
Christ thus embodies the totality of human sinfulness.30
Thus Christ’s fallen human nature embodies a paradox:

Whether Christ’s flesh is to be called sinful or sinless, … both words are

necessary to express its true character; sinful as he took it and had it to deal
with until the resurrection, sinless as he made it to become by taking it and
holding it; sinful inasmuch as it is consubstantial with our flesh; sinless as it
is his, in his person and by his person retained.31

Much of Irving’s protestation against his critics concerns their failure to

distinguish among the three kinds of sin, as well as between person and
substance and between Christ’s human nature as assumed and as sanctified.32
One final definition requires consideration. When Irving describes the
sanctification or holiness of Christ or Christians, he makes clear that he does
not mean the annihilation of the law of sin in the flesh.33 To him, this would
be to change human nature itself physically,34 and he asserts that such change
only happens at resurrection.35 Rather, to be holy in this life means the law of
sin is so suppressed that it no longer distorts one’s obedience to God.36 Irving
insists that it is possible for human thoughts and acts, by the Spirit’s power,
to be free from actual sin. This empowerment or sanctification by the Spirit

28
Irving denied both limited atonement and universal salvation (CW 5, pp. 151–3, cf. 164).
29
CW 5, p. 217.
30
Ibid., pp. 174, 217–18. Cf. Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. xxviii; Dorries, Incarnational Christology, p. 331.
31
Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. 93. Cf. p. 10: ‘Constitutional sin cannot be attributed to him, who,
though constituted flesh and blood as we are, was so under the generation of the Holy Ghost,
which, in all scripture, is denominated a holy, and not an unholy state.’ Note well Irving’s pronoun:
‘Constitutional sin cannot be attributed to him.’ Constitutional sin can, however, be attributed to
Christ’s human nature.
32
Ibid., pp. vii–xxx; note especially xxvi, where Irving protests a critic who, when quoting a passage
from Irving on the sinfulness of Christ’s flesh, ‘has had the effrontery too of putting the personal
pronoun he instead of it’ (thus transgressing Irving’s substance–person distinction).
33
Ibid., p. 43. Cf. CW 5, pp. 145–6. Nantomah, ‘Jesus the God-Man’, p. 125, n. 1, and Lee, ‘Humanity
of Christ’, pp. 42–3, apparently miss this point; Dorries, Incarnational Christology, pp. 369, 403,
does not.
34
Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, pp. 79–81.
35
CW 5, pp. 151, 162–3, 563–4.
36
Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, pp. 38–9. Cf. CW 1, pp. 623, 644.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 19

first came to Jesus upon his conception,37 and it first comes to Christians at
the moment of their regeneration.38 Christ is thus the prototype for the holy,
sinless life in sinful flesh that Christians ought to and can lead from the start
of their regenerate lives.39 Irving denies that Christ ever experienced the state
of the unregenerate.40

1.1.2 Irving’s support for his doctrine

In articulating and defending his doctrine, Irving appeals to scripture, church
tradition, and theological reasoning. He argues that scripture and tradition
teach, and soteriology demands, Christ’s full consubstantiality with humanity.
Therefore, since humanity exists in a mortal, passible, corruptible, concupiscent
state, Christ must, as well, between his conception and resurrection.41
Applying this presupposition to scripture, Irving asserts that the biblical
term ‘flesh’ has a consistent connotation of fallenness that must apply even
when Christ’s flesh is in view.42 When Rom. 8.3 speaks of the Son’s coming
‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’, the word ‘likeness’ means just like sinful flesh,
not somewhat like it.43 We must also read realistically, not symbolically or
forensically, apostolic statements that Christ became sin (2 Cor. 5.21)44 and
bore our sins in his body (1 Pet. 2.24),45 as well as the confessions of sin in
the Psalms, which Irving interprets as prophecies of Christ’s own subjective
experience, ‘the only record of his inward man’.46 His being subject to the
Mosaic Law and to temptation ‘in all points like as we are’ (Heb. 4.15)47 implies
postlapsarian inclinations to idolatry, pride, and other sins which the Law

37
CW 5, pp. 121, 124; Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, pp. xiii, 8–10, 39, 78.
38
Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. 39; cf. Day of Pentecost, pp. 19–20.
39
CW 1, pp. 623–4, 644; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. 3–4; Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, pp. 76–82;
Day of Pentecost, p. 41.
40
‘On the True Humanity of Christ’, pp. 441–2; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. vii, 3.
41
This presupposition is explored in T. W. Martindale, ‘Edward Irving’s Incarnational Christology: A
Theological Examination of Irving’s Notion of Christ’s Sinful Flesh as it relates to the Fullness of the
Incarnation’, n.p. Cited 15 June 2010. Online: http://www.pneumafoundation.org/resources/articles/
TMartindale-EdwardIrvingIncarnationalChristology.pdf.
42
Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, p. 20; cf. Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. 45.
43
Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. 12–13; Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. 1.
44
CW 5, pp. 174, 319–20; Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, pp. 1, 55–8.
45
Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, pp. xxx, 2; cf. CW 5, p. 218.
46
Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. 28; cf. pp. viii, 63; CW 5, p. 320. Note that in CW 1, pp. 420–4, Irving
rejected the application to Christ of the psalmist’s confessions of sin. Clearly Irving later changed
his mind.
47
‘Certainly “he was tempted in all points like as we are,” which Adam verily was not’ (Orthodox and
Catholic Doctrine, p. 22). Cf. ‘On the True Humanity of Christ’, pp. 425–6.
20 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

must rebuke and the devil may entice.48 Jesus’ ‘Not my will’ in Gethsemane
refers to the God-contradictory ‘will of the flesh’ within him,49 and his cry of
dereliction shows its presence.50
Turning from scripture to tradition, Irving culls passages from Reformed
sources, medieval authorities, the creeds, and both Latin and Greek fathers.51
Because Irving’s orthodoxy would be tested primarily by the Scots Confession
of Faith and the Westminster Confession of Faith, these documents receive the
lion’s share of his attention.52 Where these authorities speak of Christological
consubstantiality with humanity in its infirmities, Irving interprets such
passages in light of his view of constitutional sin. He reads creedal and
confessional references to the Spirit’s work in the virginal conception in line
with his own definition of sanctification. As noted earlier, he also uses tradition
against his critics, linking them to a variety of historic heresies.53
Irving uses theological reasoning to affirm on several grounds that the
Incarnation requires union with fallenness. First, following the Fall, sinful
flesh is the only sort that exists;54 if God wished to assume flesh rather than
create new flesh, he must take it in its current state. Secondly, unfallen human
nature is not subject to suffering, death, corruption, or concupiscence and
its attendant temptations, so the presence of any of these evils both indicates
fallenness and assures that all the rest are present (e.g. if Jesus suffers, then his
human nature is fallen and so of necessity cannot but suffer and concomitantly
must have sinful inclinations).55 Thirdly, Christ’s taking fallen flesh is necessary
in order to fully reveal the strength of sin,56 the greater power and compassion

48
Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. 8–10 (Law), 17, 24 (temptation). Cf. CW 2, pp. 216–18, 220–9.
49
Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, p. 22. Cf. CW 5, pp. 171–2, 217, 320.
50
CW 5, p. 217.
51
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, pp. 76–94. The patristic sources cited are the Council of Chalcedon;
Hippolytus; Gelasius; Tertullian, Carn. Chr.; Cyprian; Athanasius’s C. Ar.; Chrysostom’s Homiliae
in epistulam i ad Timotheum 6; Ambrose on Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer and Heb. 2.14; Augustine;
Jerome on Romans 8; Hilary; Justin Martyr; and Leo the Great (Irving often quotes from authors
without citing exact written sources; the appendix to this study partially remedies this defect).
Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. 32–7, consults the Apostles’, Nicene, and ‘Athanasian’ Creeds.
52
Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. 38–80; Opinions Circulating; Doctrine Held by the Church of
Scotland; CW 1, pp. 597–645.
53
See Section 1.1 above; also Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. 44 (Nestorianism, for treating
a sinful nature as though it were a sinful person), 71 (Marcionism, for denying Christ could be
tempted as we are).
54
CW 5, pp. 115–16, 135–6.
55
Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. 22–3, 148, 151; cf. CW 5, pp. 213–14, in which Irving produces
a nine-link logical chain. His fourth premise is, ‘No unfallen creature can suffer’ (214). McFarlane,
Christ and the Spirit, p. 146, admits, ‘Here we undoubtedly meet the most tortuous part of Irving’s
argument’.
56
CW 5, pp. 150, 218.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 21

of God,57 and the deity of Christ.58 Fourthly, only by the union of Christ’s
divine nature with sinful human nature can atonement in the true sense of the
word (at-one-ment) be forged, producing not mere legal fictions of imputed
righteousness but the genuine reconciliation of God and humanity.59 Fifthly,
for God to defeat evil by sheer omnipotence would be dishonourable and give
a measure of victory to Satan.60 Lastly, if the Incarnation involves an unfallen
human nature or one cleansed once and for all at conception, as Irving’s
opponents posited,61 so that Christ was only ‘capable of death’ and corruption
rather than ‘liable to death’ and corruption,62 then all that is revealed is that
God loves, redeems, empowers, and resurrects some other kind of humanity,
not our kind. In such a case, Christ cannot be our sympathetic high priest or
imitable exemplar.63
Despite all his arguments, Irving was found guilty of heresy and deposed.
In a year’s time, he was dead. Throughout the next hundred years, his name
was associated with an aberrant Christology until being rehabilitated by
Karl Barth.64

1.2 Revolutionizing Christology: Karl Barth

Karl Barth (1886–1968) hardly requires introduction. From Germany and

Switzerland, this ‘colossus of European Protestant thinkers’65 revolutionized

57
CW 4, pp. 529–31; 5:124–5.
58
CW 5, pp. 116–17, 417–21; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, p. viii. Irving’s claim is that the Fall
underscores the Creator–creature distinction and thus readies sinners to recognize the Godhead at
work in the fallen manhood of Christ. Dallimore, Life of Edward Irving, pp. 77, 81, 97 errs in charging
Irving with a denial of Christ’s deity. Cf. rebuttals in Martindale, ‘Incarnational Christology’, p. 24,
and Elliott, ‘Edward Irving’, pp. 152–3.
59
CW 4, pp. 340–1; CW 5, p. 5; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. 88–107, 160.
60
CW 4, pp. 536–7; cf. Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. 66.
61
The views of Irving’s first opponent, Henry Cole, and his initial exchange with Irving are discussed
in Martindale, ‘Incarnational Christology’, pp. 113–14. For Irving’s contrasts between his own and
his opponents’ views, see CW 1, p. 589; CW 5, p. 4; letters from Irving dated from 1830 and 1831
in [M.] Oliphant, The Life of Edward Irving (2 vols; London: Hurst & Blackett, 2nd edn., rev., 1862),
vol. 2, pp. 123–4, 171; Irving, ‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, pp. 75, 97; Opinions Circulating,
p. 7; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. vii, 26–8; Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, pp. 37–8. Dorries,
Incarnational Christology, pp. 297–448, claims to survey every contribution of Irving’s opponents to
the debate.
62
Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. 37 (emphases Irving’s).
63
CW 4, pp. 526–8; CW 5, pp. 128, 132–3, 438; Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine, pp. 27–8, 108–42;
Opinions Circulating, pp. 1–7, 31–3; and throughout Christ’s Holiness in Flesh and Day of Pentecost.
64
D. Macleod, ‘Christology’, DSCHT, pp. 172–7 (172); Martindale, ‘Incarnational Christology’, p. 9.
65
J. Webster, Barth (London: Continuum, 2000), p. 113.
22 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

the modern theological landscape, rethinking the entire Christian doctrinal

tradition. His revolution links directly to this study.

1.2.1 Tradition, scripture, and theological reasoning

Regarding the relationship of the Fall to Christ’s humanity, Barth sets himself
against ‘all earlier theology, up to and including the Reformers and their
successors’, as well as modern theology in general, for promoting Christ’s
sinlessness at the expense of his full participation in our fallenness, our
‘natura vitiata’. Barth singles out a Greek, Gregory Nyssen, and a Latin, Pope
Honorius I, to represent this tendency in the early church.66 As precursors of
his own position, Barth quotes six nineteenth-century sources, all continental
but one: Edward Irving.67 Yet Irving seems not to have influenced Barth,
who cites him only once and from a secondary source, H. R. Mackintosh’s
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ. Irving simply provides a precedent; more
immediate sources influence Barth.68
For Barth, that the Incarnation meant the assumption of fallen human
nature is required both biblically and soteriologically. Biblically, Barth asserts
that basar in the Old Testament and sarx in the New Testament always refer to
corrupt nature, not to prelapsarian human nature.69 Thus when quoting Jn 1.14’s
‘the Word became flesh’, Barth often recalls that this means the Word assumed

66
CD I/2, p. 153. For Nyssen, Barth cites Or. cat. 15–16, which defends divine incarnation as
appropriate due to, Barth says, ‘the intrinsic goodness of human nature’ and ‘the fact that birth
and death in themselves do not involve suffering [Ger.: das Leiden] in the strict and proper sense’.
(German from KD I/2, p. 167. Cited 10 September 2013. Online: The Digital Karl Barth Library). As
Chapter 3.4 below shows, Nyssen uses the term πάθος in Or. cat. with a broader range of meaning
than das Leiden/‘suffering’ captures. It would have been more fitting for Barth to have used die
Leidenschaft/‘passion’ (in the sense of lust or desire). See the entries for the two German terms in
W. P. Kunze, The German-English Dictionary of Religion and Theology. Cited 19 April 2014. Online:
http://dictionary-theologicalgerman.org. For Honorius, Barth quotes a pronouncement made
during the Monothelite Controversy: ‘Our nature was assumed by the divinity, not our guilt; it was
that nature which was created before sin, not that which was corrupted after the fall’ (ET K. Barth,
Church Dogmatics Study Edition vol 3 [London: T&T Clark, 2010], 157, n. EN152.). Barth later
confirms Christ’s sinlessness with appeals to Augustine, Enchir. 41, and Tertullian, Carn. Chr. 16 (CD
I/2, 156). By pp. 195–6, he appeals to Gregory Nazianzen’s Or. 30.21 to support the claim that Christ
assumed a condemned human nature from his mother.
67
CD I/2, pp. 154–5.
68
Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, pp. 249–53.
69
CD I/2, pp. 151–3, 156; IV/1, pp. 165. In IV/2, pp. 489–90, Barth acknowledges that basar and sarx
‘can simply mean man as a temporal, physical being’, but then insists that this meaning is never
independent of another meaning, that of ‘pathological … anthropology’. Barth allows, however, that
‘there will one day be a resurrection of the flesh apart from the sin which now taints it’ (CD III/2, 28).
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 23

a fallen humanity.70 He understands Rom. 8.3 to mean not that the Son merely
resembled humanity in its sin-marked existence but that he actually instantiated
such humanity.71 Additionally, Barth appeals to the Pauline statements that
Christ became sin (2 Cor. 5.21), a curse (Gal. 3.13), and a slave (Phil. 2.7,
interpreted as slavery to sin).72
Soteriologically, Barth insists that God’s becoming an unfallen human being
would be both unseemly and ineffective for salvation. It is only as Christ wears
our fallen flesh that we can be confident and comforted in his salvific solidarity
with us, rather than finding him an alien and annoying presence. It is only thus
that he can truly represent us as we are, not humanity in abstraction or in Eden
but in the sin which besets us. And it is only thus that Christ can create a new
humanity within the carcass of the old and so reconcile us to God.73

1.2.2 Sinful flesh and salvation

For Barth, fallen existence as ‘flesh’ is a state of sin, perverted and corrupted
away from, and in contradiction against, our true humanity as intended by
God.74 It is to be liable for (negatively) failing to know and love God,75 and for
(positively) hating both God and neighbour.76 Consequently, it is to live beneath
God’s condemnation as a creature lacking justification for its existence.77 This
condemnation characterizes the human experience of suffering and mortality.78

70
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (trans. E. C. Hoskyns; London: Oxford University Press, 1933),
p. 277; CD I/2, pp. 152, 159; II/1, p. 151; II/2, p. 122; III/3, pp. 303–4; IV/1, pp. 165, 174–5, 215–16,
480–81; IV/2, pp. 92, 384 (cf. 381).
71
Romans, pp. 278–82; CD I/2, p. 152; II/1, p. 397; IV/1, p. 165.
72
CD I/2, pp. 154–5; II/1, p. 397; IV/1, pp. 165, 478. In his commentary on Philippians, Barth simply
contrasts ‘the form of a servant’ in Phil. 2.7 with the confession of Jesus’ Lordship in v. 11 and so
interprets the phrase as describing ‘the appearance and the credit (or rather lack of credit) of a
being that is not God, that is not the Lord’. When Barth comes to the next phrase of 2.7, though,
he deploys familiar themes of fallenness: the Son ‘comes to “exist in the image of man” (we recall
by way of explanation the sarx egeneto, “and the Word became flesh”, of John 1:14, and the still
sharper Pauline parallel in Rom. 8:3: en homoiōmati sarkos hamartias, “in the form of sin-dominated
flesh”!)’. – Epistle to the Philippians (trans. J. W. Leitch; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 40th
anniversary edn, 2002), p. 63, emphasis his.
73
Romans, pp. 281–2; CD I/2, pp. 151–5, 189; III/2, p. 48; IV/1, pp. 157, 223, 481, 552–3; IV/2, pp. 92, 452.
74
Romans, p. 281; CD I/2, pp. 188–9; II/1, p. 398; III/2, pp. 28, 35, 40–2, 48; IV/1, pp. 131–2, 158, 216,
481, 484–510; IV/2, pp. 92–3, 96, 379, 384; IV/3/1, pp. 369, 371–3, 434–61.
75
Romans, pp. 278–9; CD I/2, p. 151; IV/2, pp. 379, 405.
76
CD I/2, p. 151; II/1, p. 397; IV/1, p. 496.
77
CD I/2, pp. 40, 151, 153, 155; II/1, p. 398; III/2, p. 92; IV/1, pp. 166, 174, 484–92; IV/2, p. 25; IV/3/1,
pp. 461–78.
78
CD I/2, p. 151; IV/1, pp. 131–2, 165, 175, 215. Barth sees human pain and death as parts of the good
creation apart from the Fall (CD III/1, 366–75). Postlapsarian humanity, however, experiences this
pain and death as ‘serious tokens’ of God’s wrath against sin (CD II/1, 396).
24 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Barth, however, qualifies his analysis. First, ‘The commission of sin as

such is not an attribute of true human existence as such, whether from the
standpoint of its creation by God or from that of the fact that it is flesh on
account of the Fall.’79 To be flesh, then, means to be held accountable for sin
but not necessarily to commit sin. (How this may be will be shown in Christ’s
case below.) Secondly, Barth denies that sin is hereditary or exists at a sub-
volitional level.80 He breaks with the traditional understanding of ‘original
sin’ as a spiritual disease transmitted from a historical Adam. No causal
connection obtains between Adam’s sinning and our own. ‘Adam’ typifies all
humanity, and ‘original sin’ designates that, individually and collectively, we
freely choose to sin from the beginning of our existence.81 As John Webster
comments, ‘In effect, Barth identifies original sin with total depravity.’82 Every
actual sin is an expression of the totality of the rebellious life-act which is
original sin.83
Inasmuch as Barth teaches that original sin is the totality of human
sinfulness and that Christ assumed a humanity identical with ours, the
implication is clear: Christ assumed a humanity subject to original sin. This
conclusion appears at first to contradict Barth’s statement, ‘And the Son
of God did not assume original sin, but our sinful nature.’ This statement,
though, must be interpreted in context: Barth, in dialogue with the Lutheran
theologian Flacius, is denying that human nature is entirely reducible to
original sin. Just as what is baptized is not sin but sinners, so what is assumed is
not simply original sin but the nature bearing original sin.84 Elsewhere, Barth
interprets Christ’s virginal conception not as quarantining his humanity from

79
CD I/2, p. 156.
80
E. Jüngel, Karl Barth, a Theological Legacy (trans. G. E. Paul; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986),
comments, ‘Barth thought it wise to “abandon” the concept of hereditary sin, which he viewed as
a contradiction in terms, and to replace it with the concept of “primal sin” [Ursünde] (peccatum
originale)’ (50, citing CD IV/1, p. 501; brackets original). Cf. CD I/2, p. 189; III/3, pp. 320, 325.
81
CD I/2, pp. 155, 190–1; IV/1, pp. 499–511; IV/2, pp. 490–1; cf. Romans, pp. 171–2. As W. Krötke
explains in his ‘The humanity of the human person in Karl Barth’s anthropology’, The Cambridge
Companion to Karl Barth (ed. J. Webster; trans. P. G. Ziegler; Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), pp. 159–76 (165): ‘Sin is only an actual, ontic human pattern of action that can be
justified neither by appeal to God nor to a “predisposition” of the human.’ Note, though, that when
Barth claims that we sin freely, he distinguishes between two kinds of freedom. The freedom to obey
God is liberum arbitrium, while the freedom to sin is servum arbitrium. We contradict the former by
using the latter (CD I/2, p. 189; IV/2, p. 93).
82
J. Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1998), p. 72. The whole of ch. 4 concerns Barth’s doctrine of original sin.
83
CD I/2, p. 189; IV/2, pp. 490–1; Cf. CD IV/1, p. 499.
84
CD III/2, p. 28; cf. pp. 27–9; pace Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, p. 247.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 25

original sin but as signalling its overcoming in his theanthropic constitution:

the Virgin Birth

indicates the existence of a Man who as a man like all of us in this sinful nature
of ours, in the flesh, bears with us the way and the curse of sin, but who as
God does not live out the sin [i.e., commit actual sin], because even now He
does not live it [i.e., abide in original sin] …. But then His existence in our
old human nature posits and signifies a penetration and a new beginning.85

The Incarnation is a divine claiming and sanctifying of sinful flesh which

excludes sin (whether actual or original), exalting our humanity to a position
of perfect alignment with God’s will.86 Barth writes,

In Him is the human nature created by God without the self-contradiction

which afflicts us and without the self-deception by which we seek to escape
from this our shame. In Him is human nature without human sin. For as
He the Son of God becomes man, and therefore our nature becomes His,
the rent is healed, the impure becomes pure and the enslaved is freed. For
although He becomes what we are, He does not do what we do, and so He
is not what we are.87

Due to its union with his deity, Christ’s flesh is made capable of knowing God88
and resisting temptations89 by the Holy Spirit’s power.90 These temptations are
not merely outward but inward, for Christ’s very soul endured sorrow and the
sense of godforsakenness.91 Nevertheless, his utter sinlessness is a foregone
conclusion – ‘The Son of God could not sin – how could God be untrue to
Himself?,’92 while retaining the character of a moral achievement.93

85
CD I/2, p. 189; cf. pp. 188–92. K. Zathureczky, ‘Jesus’ Impeccability: Beyond Ontological Sinlessness’,
Science et Esprit 60.1 (2008), pp. 55–71 (68), explains, ‘The sinlessness of Jesus was not an ontological
condition of his being, secured by his virginal conception. The Virgin Birth was not what constituted
the sinlessness of Jesus. It was only the indicator of His particular origin.’
86
CD I/2, pp. 152, 155–6, 159; IV/1, pp. 208, 216, 236–7, 258–9, 308, 512; IV/2, pp. 92–3, 96, 379, 452.
87
CD III/2, p. 48; cf. I/2, p. 189. This quote establishes that Barth, like T. F. Torrance after him, can
use the language of ontological healing and purification. Cf. the distancing of Barth from and the
faulting of Torrance for such language in Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, pp. 255–7, 278–9.
88
CD II/1, p. 151.
89
CD I/2, pp. 155–9; III/2, p. 51; IV/1, pp. 215–16, 258–73.
90
CD IV/2, pp. 93–6; indeed, the whole life-course of the theanthropic Christ is the work of the Holy
Spirit: CD I/2, pp. 197–200; IV/1, pp. 147–8, 308–9; IV/2, pp. 94, 323–5, 347.
91
CD I/2, p. 158; IV/1, pp. 264–8.
92
CD I/2, p. 40; cf. 155. In IV/1’s exegesis of Christ’s Gethsemane prayers, Barth insists that the Son’s
will was never resistant to his Father’s (269–71).
93
Karl Barth, Karl Barth’s Table Talk (ed. J. D. Godsey, SJT Occasional Papers No. 10, Edinburgh: Oliver
& Boyd), pp. 68–9, quoted in McFarlane, Christ and the Spirit, p. 186, n. 56. Cf. CD I/2, pp. 158–9;
26 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Christ’s sinlessness does not, however, make him an exemplar of general

or abstract morality.94 Rather, it consists solely in the fact that, throughout his
life in the flesh, he willingly accepts his divine vocation to identify with and
be judged in place of sinful human beings.95 He confesses that God is in the
right against the sinful humanity which he concretely represents instead of
attempting to justify or save himself.96 By thus doing the opposite of what all
other humans do, Christ reverses the Fall.97
Throughout his earthly sojourn, Christ bears in his humanity the corruption,
sin, guilt, and mortality that characterize life in the flesh.98 Yet if he never sins
and so bears no personal guilt, and if there is no inherited Adamic sin or guilt
for him to bear, then how can Christ be said to have, in Barth’s words, a ‘sinful
nature’ ‘with the guilt lying upon it of which it has to repent’?99 By what means
does Christ’s humanity acquire sin and guilt?
Barth’s answer is that, although God’s Son did not and could not fall into
a state of corruption, sin, guilt, and mortality, he could humble himself to
our fallen state.100 In the Incarnation, Christ’s being is conditioned by our
corruption, sin, and guilt, which are ‘alien’ to him,101 as well as by our liability
to temptation and death. As Robert Jenson puts Barth’s view, ‘Of this chosen
man it can well be said that He was sinful without sinning, rescued from the
fall without falling.’102
The conditioning of Christ’s being by sin includes his association with
sinners and his enduring accusation and punishment as a sinner.103 It is in these
senses that Christ is ‘sinful’. Barth writes in his exposition of the Apostles’ Creed,

IV/1, p. 216; IV/2, pp. 92–3. P. D. Jones, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church
Dogmatics (London: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 170–6, has an excellent discussion of Christ’s sinlessness
in CD IV/2 as not being a case of divine overriding of the human. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, pp.
90–1, singles out Barth as a chief proponent of the fallenness view, then claims that its proponents
deny Christ’s impeccability. In Barth’s case, this claim is false.
94
Romans, p. 279; CD I/2, pp. 152, 156–7; IV/1, pp. 165, 239, 258; IV/2, p. 92.
95
Romans, p. 97; CD III/2, pp. 47–8; IV/1, pp. 94–6, 166, 175, 216–24, 237, 258, 552–3; IV/2, p. 92.
96
CD I/2, pp. 157–8; IV/1, pp. 172, 175, 258–60, 445, 554; IV/2, p. 92.
97
CD IV/1, pp. 258–9.
98
Romans, p. 281; CD I/2, p. 40; II/1, pp. 397–8; II/2, p. 143; III/2, p. 48; III/3, p. 303; IV/1, p. 481; IV/2,
pp. 92–3, 96, 452; K. Barth, Credo (trans. J. S. McNab; London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936, 1964), 73.
99
CD III/2, p. 28 and I/2, p. 40, respectively.
100
CD I/2, pp. 51, 151–9; III/2, p. 51; IV/1, pp. 92, 478; IV/2, pp. 92–3.
101
CD III/2, p. 48; CD IV/1, p. 92. In Christ, human nature is free from corruption (III/2, p. 51; cf. 43)
because ‘He made our human essence His own even in its corruption, but He did not repeat or
affirm its inward contradiction’ (IV/2, p. 92). Cf. CD IV/1, p. 237.
102
R. W. Jenson, Alpha and Omega: A Study in the Theology of Karl Barth (New York: Thomas Nelson
& Sons, 1963), p. 60 (emphasis original).
103
Romans, p. 282; CD I/2, pp. 152, 172; IV/1, pp. 165, 239; IV/2, p. 92.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 27

‘The Son of God as true Son of Man must suffer, …. He must have everything
against Him, success and fortune, wicked men and good, State and Church, His
own human nature – which is indeed “flesh” – yes, and God Himself.’104 In the
Church Dogmatics, Barth explains how Christ’s flesh is ‘against Him’:
He stepped into the heart of the inevitable conflict between the faithfulness
of God and the unfaithfulness of man. He took this conflict into His own
being. He bore it in Himself to the bitter end. He took part in it from both
sides. He endured it from both sides. He took upon Himself, in likeness to
us … the ‘flesh of sin’ (Rom. 8:3). He shared in the status, constitution and
situation of man in which man resists God and cannot stand before Him
but must die. How could God resist Himself? How could God sin? The Son
of God knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21, Jn. 8:46, Heb. 4:15). But He could enter
into man’s mode of being, being in the flesh, in which there is absolutely no
justification before God (Rom. 3:20), but only sin.105

Here Barth denies that Christ perpetuates fallen human resistance towards
God, but affirms that Christ stands as, with, and for fallen humanity under
the divine judgement upon that resistance. Yet Christ also stands as, with, and
for the holy God who judges human sin. Thus his flesh is against him as God
in the sense of being judged, while God is against him as flesh in the sense of
being the Judge.

1.2.3 The ontology of the incarnation

Barth’s view on the fallenness of Christ’s flesh as part of the drama of
divine–human reconciliation remains steadfast throughout his writings.106

104
Credo, p. 81 (emphases original). Cf. CD II/1, p. 152.
105
CD II/1, pp. 397–8.
106
But K. S. Kantzer, ‘The Christology of Karl Barth’, Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 1.20
(1958), pp. 25–7, presents Barth’s view of Christ’s sinlessness as shifting in the following three phases:
Christ as a sinner in Romans; Christ as possessing a sinful nature but not sinning in CD I/2; and
Christ as merely afflicted with human weakness in CD IV. Pace Kantzer, Barth’s view is consistent
from Romans through CD IV. The passage in Romans to which Kantzer appeals is, ‘Jesus stands
among sinners as a sinner’ (97). The immediate context, however, clarifies the intent of this line: ‘The
life of Jesus is perfected obedience to the will of the faithful God. Jesus stands among sinners as a
sinner; He sets Himself wholly under the judgement under which the world is set’ (97). Barth means
that Christ’s ‘perfected obedience’ consists in his identifying himself with sinners. Likewise, Barth
later affirms both that Christ was sinless (279) and that he was crucified as a sinner (282). Barth uses
the same language in CD IV/1, where he asserts, ‘Jesus Christ was obedient in that He willed to take
our place as sinners and did, in fact, take our place. When we speak of the sinlessness of Jesus we
must always think concretely of this’ (258). In light thereof, Barth can immediately move on to call
Christ the ‘one great sinner’ (259). Nor does Barth in CD IV back away from a strong understanding
of the sinfulness of the flesh that the Word assumed, an understanding already present in Romans’
28 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

The doctrine’s ontological underpinnings, however, develop during Barth’s

career and even during the writing of the Church Dogmatics.107 Space forbids
describing this development in detail, but the result is that Barth’s Christology
becomes more thoroughly actualized and eternalized.
By ‘actualism’ is meant, ‘Being is always an event and often an act (always
an act whenever an agent capable of decision is concerned).’108 On this view,
Christ’s divine history of condescension to assume damned flesh concurs with
his human history in which that very flesh is exalted to perfect alignment with
God’s will and act.109 This coordination of humbling and uplifting is not a
settled state flowing from a single event; it is a continuous double movement in
which Jesus is ever rejecting the seduction of evil in his fleshly condition while
simultaneously embracing his divine vocation to exist in that very condition.
By his choices, he constantly constitutes himself as both sinful flesh (i.e. flesh
under divine judgement) and sinless.110 Jones captures this paradox well when
he writes that Christ ‘affirm[s] the death of sinful humanity by constituting
himself wholeheartedly as sin, in order that God may draw sin into Godself ’.111

description of the Word’s becoming ‘sin-controlled flesh’ (277, emphasis original): in IV/1 Barth
writes of Christ, ‘He took our flesh, the nature of man as he comes from the fall. … His sinlessness
was not therefore His condition. It was the act of His being in which He defeated temptation in His
condition which is ours, in the flesh’ (258–9). A hundred pages earlier, Barth had penned, ‘In the
fact that God is gracious to man, all the limitations of man are God’s limitations, all his weaknesses,
and more, all his perversities are His’ (158). Likewise, IV/2 claims that Christ was ‘a participant
in our sinful essence’ (92–3). Contrary to Kantzer, Bromiley, ‘Reformers’, p. 85, detects a shift in
Barth on the extent not of Christ’s fallenness but of humanity’s: in CD I/2, Barth denies that, by
virtue of creation, human nature remains essentially good though fallen; by CD III/2, however, he
approximates this very view when ‘present[ing] Christ as him in whom alone we see real humanity,
as distinct from the falsified humanity that we find in ourselves. The humanity that Christ assumed
is the true humanity that is sinful in us’ (emphasis Bromiley’s).
107
The currently crucial work on Barth’s theological development is B. L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s
Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon,
1995). Pages 20–3 give a summary of McCormack’s proposed paradigm. His Orthodox and Modern:
Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), pp. 262–5, offers a
‘modest correction’ to his proposal. Cf. Jones, Humanity of Christ, p. 100, n. 80.
108
G. Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991), p. 4; cf. 30–2.
109
Jüngel, Karl Barth, p. 133; A. Neder, ‘History in Harmony: Karl Barth on the Hypostatic Union’,
Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism (eds. B. L. McCormack and C. B. Anderson; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2011), pp. 148–76.
110
Jones, Humanity of Christ, pp. 109, 113–14, 175, 231–2; Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, pp. 254–7, citing
B. L. McCormack, For Us and Our Salvation: Incarnation and Atonement in the Reformed Tradition
(n.p.: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1993), pp. 20–2. For critiques of Barth’s actualism as
mediated through McCormack, see M. S. Horton, ‘Covenant, Election, and Incarnation: Evaluating
Barth’s Actualist Christology’, Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism, pp. 112–47; J. Wynne, ‘The
Livingness of God; or, the Place of Substance and Dynamism in a Theology of the Divine Perfections’,
IJST 13.2 (2011), pp. 190–203.
111
Jones, Humanity of Christ, p. 224 (emphasis mine). Cf. Zathureczky, ‘Jesus’ Impeccability’, pp. 65–8.
Habets, Theology in Transposition, p. 175, overlooks Barth’s actualism and thus his ‘distinctive
contribution’ to the fallenness debate.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 29

The Son’s assumption of fallen flesh is eternalized as a supratemporal

act within the being of God which is prototypical of our own being in the
flesh. Here Barth’s doctrine of election is crucial. The primary object of God’s
election is none other than God. God eternally wills to be oriented towards
humanity.112
Furthermore, God wills to demonstrate his sovereignty, holiness, and love
by delivering humanity from evil, sin, and death, and so God instrumentally
and negatively wills the existence of evil and of fallen humanity.113 God’s will
takes the form of Christ, who eternally wills himself to exist as united to fallen
flesh in order to reconcile sinners to God. Only by looking to the Incarnate
One– not to the largely unknowable qualities of as-yet-unfallen Adam114 – do
we see God’s intent for humanity.115 Our humanity is but a copy of Christ’s; he
is the ‘prototype’ of humanity,116 not only as created but also as fallen. Even
before Barth formulated his mature doctrine of election, he could write, ‘We
are not saying too much when we say that really and originally only Jesus
Christ is man who is flesh.’117 In sum, he

does not exist as God’s Son from eternity to eternity except in our flesh …. At
this point we are keeping intentionally and emphatically to the word ‘flesh’
as used in Jn. [1.14], because in the Bible this word means man as such, man
as the enemy of the grace of God. … He, the pure, holy Son of God, obedient
to the Father from eternity to eternity, has Himself become a man like this.118

112
CD II/1, pp. 271–2, 297; II/2, pp. 76–7, 103–43, 141, 175–6; III/1, pp. 50–1; IV/1, p. 66. Cf. K. Barth,
The Humanity of God (trans. J. N. Thomas; Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1960), pp. 37–65; Jenson,
Alpha and Omega, pp. 63–70, 93–5, 145; Jüngel, Karl Barth, pp. 127–38; McCormack, Orthodox
and Modern, chs 7–10. On the debate between McCormack and his interlocutors on the question
of which is logically prior, the Trinity or God’s self-election, cf., for example, M. T. Dempsey (ed.),
Trinity and Election in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011); K. Diller, ‘Is God
Necessarily Who God Is? Alternatives for the Trinity and Election Debate’, SJT 66.2 (2013), pp. 209–
20; G. Hunsinger, Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutical Proposal (Grand Rapids: Baker,
2015); P. D. Molnar, Faith, Freedom and the Spirit: The Economic Trinity in Barth, Torrance and
Contemporary Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2015).
113
CD II/2, pp. 122–4, 141–2, 169–71; III/1, pp. 50–1, 102, 108–9; III/3, pp. 351–2, 361–2. Barth says
that God does not will evil or the fall into sin, but that God’s non-willing as well as God’s willing
grants reality to its object. (Jones, Humanity of Christ, pp. 218–19, finds Barth’s logic strained at this
juncture.) This is equivalent to what is termed above as God’s negative willing.
114
CD II/2, pp. 163–4.
115
CD III/2, passim; e.g., pp. 3, 41, 43, 48.
116
CD III/2, p. 50. Cf. CD II/2, p. 740; idem, Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5 (trans.
T. A. Smail; New York: Harper Bros., 1956, 1957).
117
CD I/2, p. 44. In the immediate context, Barth is discussing the flesh’s knowledge of God, but the
wider context (40) indicates that the flesh’s sinfulness is also on Barth’s mind. Likewise, in II/1,
p. 151, the epistemological and hamartiological aspects of flesh intertwine. Cf. Jenson, Alpha and
Omega, p. 103.
118
CD II/1, p. 151. Cf. Jenson, Alpha and Omega, p. 20.
30 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Do these comments posit a pre-existent humanity of Christ? Do they imply

an everlasting dualism of flesh versus Spirit within the life of God? We will
consider each of these questions in turn.
Barth affirms the existence of the eternal Son prior to his union with human
flesh,119 but opposes any tendency to define or interpret the pre-incarnate Son
as undetermined by the incarnate Son.120 There are three ways that ‘the man
Jesus already was even before He was’.121 First, the theanthropic union has
been God’s purpose from all eternity past, and so may be spoken of as already
accomplished.122 Secondly, the Incarnation was ‘objectively prefigured’ in the
Old Testament.123 Thirdly, Christ’s earthly lifespan partakes of God’s own time,
in which past, present, and future exist simultaneously in an ‘eternal now’.124
Time also plays an important role in Barth’s denial of ‘eternal dualism’125
between God and fallen flesh. The anti-creation chaos that breaks into the
present as evil (e.g. sin, demons); the misery and death which are natural to
God’s nonetheless-good creation; and God’s own incarnate sharing in all these
are merely temporary, provisional moments in God’s past. They have no future
with God; therefore, to Barth’s mind, an eternal dualism is avoided.126 Thus
Christ’s flesh eternally was fallen, but is not and will not be fallen. Exaltation ‘is
the true, definitive and eternal form of the incarnate Son of God’.127

1.2.4 A glance backward and forward

As we transition to the next section of this chapter, an orientating remark
is in order. Whereas Irving appeals to church tradition, both Eastern and
Western, in support of the fallen humanity of Christ, Barth chastises the
same tradition, both Eastern and Western, for not upholding this view. It

119
CD III/1, pp. 54–6; III/2, p. 483; IV/3/1, p. 397. Cf. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, pp. 187, 191.
120
McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, pp. 185–6.
121
CD III/2, p. 464.
122
CD III/2, pp. 484–5; cf. 476–7; II/1, pp. 622; II/2, pp. 104–22, 140–3, 153–62, 175–6; III/1, p. 51;
IV/1, p. 66.
123
CD III/2, p. 475; cf. 476, 480–3.
124
CD I/2, p. 52; II/1, pp. 608–40; III/2, pp. 440–54, 464–77, 536–7. Cf. Hunsinger, How to Read Karl
Barth, p. 241.
125
CD III/1, p. 384.
126
CD III/1, pp. 383–4; III/3, pp. 361–2. (On chaos as essentially past, see III/1, pp. 101–2, 109; III/3, p.
356.) Yet if God’s eternity includes a ‘past [that] is not left behind, nor does it fade’ (CD III/2, p. 536),
is eternal dualism truly avoided?
127
CD III/1, p. 384; cf. 110, where Barth makes clear that Christ’s exaltation is the pledge of the
exaltation of the whole cosmos.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 31

has been left to Barth’s student, T. F. Torrance, to mediate between these two
interpretations of tradition: Torrance grounds the doctrine of Christ’s fallen
flesh in Eastern patristic theology, while critiquing much of the Western
tradition for rejecting it.

1.3 Theologian of mediation: Thomas F. Torrance

Thomas F. Torrance (1913–2007) has been considered a premiere anglophone

Reformed theologian of the twentieth century – virtually the Barth of
Britain.128 His association with Barth is apt not only due to the comparative
quantity and quality of Torrance’s work, but also due to its significant overlap
of content with Barth’s.129 During Torrance’s student days at New College,
Edinburgh, his professor H. R. Mackintosh introduced him to Barth’s
thought.130 Torrance later wrote his doctoral dissertation under Barth, and
still later supervised the English translation of the Kirchliche Dogmatik.131
Although able to critique Barth’s thought,132 nevertheless Torrance openly
confesses its influence upon him.133
Torrance presents Barth as teaching that Christ bore a fallen yet sinless
human nature,134 the very view which Torrance himself holds. He claims that
Mackintosh first taught him this truth,135 but that he afterwards received it as
an epiphany while reading KD I/2.136 He stakes orthodoxy itself on this view,
for ‘we have ultimately taken the line of Arians or the Liberals’ rather than ‘the

128
A. E. McGrath, T. F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), p. xi; E. M.
Colyer, How to Read T. F. Torrance: Understanding His Trinitarian & Scientific Theology (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001), pp. 11, 15, 20, n. 14. G. Hunsinger has called him ‘arguably the greatest
Reformed theologian since Karl Barth’ in ‘Thomas F. Torrance: A Eulogy,’ Participatio 1 (2009), p. 11.
Cited 18 January 2011. Online: http://www.tftorrance. org/journal/participatio_vol_1_2009.pdf.
129
Colyer, How to Read, p. 20, n. 12.
130
T. F. Torrance, Karl Barth, Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990),
pp. 83, 121.
131
Colyer, How to Read, pp. 39–40, 44. For a historically contextualized tracking of Torrance’s mediation
of Barth to the English-speaking world, see D. D. Morgan, Barth Reception in Britain (London: T&T
Clark, 2010), pp. 1–3, 49, 183–4, 193, 220–8, 242–60.
132
Karl Barth, pp. 132–5; cf. McGrath, T. F. Torrance, pp. 166–7.
133
T. F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), p. 128, n. 1; Karl Barth,
p. xii; T. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1996), p. ix.
134
Karl Barth, pp. 103–4, 177–9, 202–5; cf. 161, 229–32.
135
We will examine this claim in Chapter 2.3.
136
Atonement, pp. 441–2 (Torrance refers to CD I/2 but actually read the German original: see McGrath,
T. F. Torrance, p. 45).
32 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

line of the Nicene Creed’ unless we can affirm that ‘the Son of God became
incarnate within our fallen, guilt-laden humanity’.137
Yet scholars who concur on the doctrine’s importance for Torrance diverge
in their understandings of it. P. S. Kang identifies Torrance’s view with Irving’s
and interprets it as Christ’s experiencing sorrow, physical weakness, and
solidarity with others’ conflict with God while himself remaining at peace with
God.138 Duncan Rankin detects a shift in Torrance from an early, ‘Apollinarian’
abridgement of the fallenness view in his Auburn lectures to a later, more
robust affirmation which may imply concupiscence in Christ.139 Peter Cass
hears Torrance teaching that Christ carried original sin and an ‘evil inclination’
in his flesh throughout his earthly life until it was condemned and slain with
Christ himself at Calvary.140 Kevin Chiarot seconds Rankin’s claim of a shift
and finds the mature Torrance incoherently holding to Christ’s humanity
as simultaneously fully sanctified, fallen, progressively sanctified, and
progressively hardened.141 Myk Habets takes seriously the critical reception of
Irving in Torrance’s Auburn lectures and contends that Torrance sees Christ’s
assumed humanity as fallen yet hallowed and guiltless of original sin due to
union with the all-holy Logos.142

1.3.1 Torrance’s early Christology

To weigh these competing interpretations, we turn first to Torrance’s 1938–9
Auburn Seminary lectures, delivered during a hiatus in his doctoral studies143
and much influenced by Mackintosh’s Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ

137
T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard, 2nd edn,
1992), 63.
138
P. S. Kang, ‘The Concept of the Vicarious Humanity of Christ in the Theology of Thomas Forsyth
Torrance’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1983), pp. 261–2, 273 (Torrance and
Irving), 264–5 (fallenness as sorrow and weakness), 272 (solidarity with hostile humanity yet peace
with God). Kang’s doctoral supervisor was Torrance’s brother James; T. F. himself read part of the
thesis and dialogued with Kang (iv).
139
Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, pp. 104–19 (transition from ‘Apollinarian eggshells’ [quote from p. 109]),
294, A-93 through A-95 (concupiscence). Like Kang, Rankin had personal contact with T. F.
Torrance while writing his thesis (ix).
140
P. Cass, Christ Condemned Sin in the Flesh: Thomas F. Torrance’s Doctrine of Soteriology and Its
Ecumenical Significance (Saarbrücken, Germany: Dr Müller, 2009), pp. 28, 168–9, 206–10, 217.
141
K. Chiarot, The Unassumed is the Unhealed: The Humanity of Christ in the Theology of T. F. Torrance
(Cascade, OR: Pickwick, 2013), chs 3–6.
142
Habets, Theology in Transposition, pp. 188–95; idem, ‘Fallen Humanity’, pp. 27–8, n. 41, 30–1.
143
Torrance, Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. i–ii; McGrath, T. F. Torrance, ch. 3.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 33

and Barth’s KD I/1–2.144 Here we find the lush language of fallenness which
Torrance will employ over the rest of his career: ‘[Christ] was made in the
concrete likeness of sinful flesh, though without sin, … slaying in his death the
sinful humanity’; ‘All through his incarnate life God the Son identified himself
with us in our fallen humanity, took our sin and our guilt vicariously upon
himself ’; ‘he has actually stooped to enter our frail mortal flesh, the flesh of
sin under the judgment of God’s holy law and its curse’; ‘It is in this fallen and
twisted humanity that God’s Creator Word … became incarnate and in and
through his Incarnate being and life penetrated and endured the contradiction
of sinners …. He the Mediator must descend into the blackness of man’s
alienation from God to save him’; ‘We are not to think of this identification of
Christ with us in our sin as a legal fiction … but as an actual fact.’145 Here too
we find Irving quoted favourably against bibliolatry.146
On the other hand, here with unparalleled clarity, young Torrance, in
dialogue with his teachers Mackintosh and Barth, distinguishes his view
from Irving’s. Torrance’s lecture on ‘The Humiliation of Christ’ has four
parts: ‘1) Jesus The Incarnate Servant’; ‘2) The Virgin Birth of Jesus’; ‘3) The
Vicarious Humanity of Christ’; and ‘4) The Sinlessness of the Lord Jesus’.147
Torrance draws heavily from KD I/2 §15 in much of Part One, throughout
Part Two, and in Part Three’s introductory definition of flesh as fallen and
condemned humanity, with the attendant denial that Christ was a ‘sinful man’
and affirmation of Christ’s identification with our sinful, accursed state.148
Then Torrance breaks with his Doktorvater’s exposition. KD I/2’s next two
paragraphs contain Barth’s critique of patristic through post-Reformation
tradition and commendation of Irving and other innovators on the subject

144
Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, pp. 75–6, A-19 and A-20; although Rankin’s references are to CD I/1–2,
in fact Torrance had read CD I/1 in 1935 (Colyer, How to Read, pp. 23, 38), KD I/1-2 thereafter
(McGrath, T. F. Torrance, p. 134), and was reading KD I/2 in 1938–9 while at Auburn (Torrance,
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, p. ii).
145
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. 57, 94, 112, 163–4, 171, respectively.
146
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, p. 100, quoting CW 2, p. 392. This quotation is absent from Mackintosh’s
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, thus indicating that Torrance had read Irving for himself.
147
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, p. v, gives the outline; the lecture itself appears as ch. 8.
148
Torrance’s order differs from Barth’s, but the content is often verbatim (in translation) or virtually
so. Cf. Doctrine of Jesus Christ, ch. 8 part 1, pp. 113–15 with CD I/2, pp. 126, 129–33, 136, 149–51,
155, 159–61, 163, 168; part 2, pp. 115–21 with CD I/2, pp. 172–202; and part 3, p. 121 with CD I/2,
pp. 151–2 (quote above from Doctrine of Jesus Christ, p. 121//CD I/2, p. 152). Note: Doctrine of Jesus
Christ, p. 113 incorrectly cites KD I/2, p. 166. The true citation is KD I/2, p. 170. Cited 10 September
2013. Online: The Digital Karl Barth Library.
34 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

of Christ’s fallenness before turning to discuss Christ’s sinlessness.149 Precisely

at this point, and before his own treatment of Christ’s sinlessness, Torrance
inserts a critique of Irving which owes much to Mackintosh.150
In Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, Mackintosh charges Irving with
confusing ‘corruptible’ (subject to physical death) with ‘corrupt’ (morally
depraved) and illicitly applying the latter to Christ’s humanity; describes Irving’s
teaching that only the Holy Spirit restrained this morally corrupt nature; and
equates Irving’s language of ‘fallen human nature’ and teaching of ‘the existence
in Christ of … a strong efficacious germ of evil’ with the term ‘original sin’ and
the dilution of Christ’s sinlessness.151 Torrance himself honours Mackintosh’s
distinction between ‘corruptible’ and ‘corrupt’: ‘We cannot think of [Christ’s]
flesh as corrupt in the sense of Irving. … Now we cannot think of the humanity
of this Jesus in whom divine nature and human nature are indissolubly united
as in any sense corrupt, but in the most supreme sense as Holy’; yet ‘We must
think of the humanity he assumed as thus coming under the conditions of fallen
and corruptible humanity – for he was able to suffer, was weak with weariness,
hungered and thirsted; his humanity as such was not immortal.’ Torrance also
asserts that, due to the theanthropic union, ‘we are to think of Christ’s flesh as
perfectly and completely sinless in his own nature, and not simply in virtue of
the Spirit as Irving puts it. We must think of him nevertheless as really one with
us, as really a member of our fallen race.’152 While accepting the language of
fallenness, Torrance answers Mackintosh’s final concerns by denying original
sin in Christ and affirming his ‘absolute sinlessness’ (using Doctrine of the
Person of Jesus Christ itself and Emil Brunner’s The Mediator),153 concluding
with a defence of non posse peccare in Christ’s case.154

149
KD I/2, pp. 167–9. Cited 10 September 2013. Online: The Digital Karl Barth Library.
150
Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, pp. 99–103. Playing on European geography, Rankin quips, ‘Torrance is
clearly caught in mid-channel between his late Scottish professor and his new Continental mentor’
(101).
151
H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2nd edn, 1913,
1920), pp. 277–8 (quotes from latter page).
152
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, p. 122. Torrance classes Irving’s view as quasi-Ebionite, while also rejecting
the opposite, ‘almost … Docetic’ error that ‘holds [Christ] rather aloof from human struggles and
temptations and weaknesses; an emphasis is placed on his human nature as such that it becomes
“vergottert” or deified in its own perfection’ (121–2). Here he echoes the charge made against
Schleiermacher’s Christology by Mackintosh in Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, p. 255, and
his 1933 Croall Lectures, later revised, expanded, and published as Types of Modern Theology: From
Schleiermacher to Barth (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, [1937]), pp. 88–90.
153
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. 122–5 (quote from p. 123).
154
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. 126–30.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 35

Torrance’s above-sampled language of fallenness begs for interpretation in

light of this rejection of Irving. Torrance’s pronominal choices are significant:
it is always ‘our’ sin, guilt, and corruption which Christ bears, never ‘his’.155
To Christ’s own humanity Torrance attributes the fallen state’s physical
effects (e.g. mortality) and moral temptations, but never inward sin. In the
Incarnation, Christ assumes ‘sinful flesh’, that is, the same flesh which in all
others – including his mother – is an accessory to their sin, and sanctifies it at
the moment of assumption so that, in union with his sinless divine person, it
too is sinless. Yet it is still ‘fallen’ insofar as it suffers infirmities and temptations.
Additionally, by becoming a member of the human race, Christ enters into
ontological solidarity with sinners under the curse of God’s wrath.156 Thus
Christ’s flesh, while holy, is ‘fallen’ in the sense of suffering divine judgement
upon the sin of which Christ himself is innocent. The strife, agony, and enmity
which Christ endures throughout his life and which climaxes in his crucifixion
come not from an inward struggle with unholy desires but from two sources:
the enmity of God against sin, which Christ increasingly experiences as he
progressively identifies himself with sinners and takes responsibility for their
guilt, particularly from his baptism to his death; and the enmity of Satan
and sinners against him, demonstrated in tempting and persecuting him
increasingly even unto death. Therefore, Christ’s humanity is ‘vicarious’: in
his holy humanity, he represents God to the world, suffers all its hostility
against God, yet offers divine mercy instead of retribution; simultaneously, he
represents sinful humanity to God, suffers God’s wrath against sin, yet offers
human confession and obedience instead of rebellion. In this way atonement
is worked out over the whole course of Jesus’ earthly life. In his resurrection,
the last vestiges of fallenness (subjection to infirmity, mortality, temptation,
and divine wrath) fall away and the new humanity which he embodies is
perfected.157
Before comparing the Auburn lectures to Torrance’s later work, we must
address Rankin’s claim that an early Apollinarianism lurks in their lines that
Christ’s flesh ‘was created out of fallen humanity, but without the will of fallen
humanity’ and that Christ’s ‘Person’ and ‘personality’ were divine, not human

155
For this crucial insight, thanks to T. A. Noble, personal communication (12 April 2013).
156
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. 112, 122–3.
157
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. 59, 94–5, 112, 122–3, 161–76.
36 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

(Torrance draws this latter point from Brunner). Rankin interprets these lines
as denials of any human will or personality in Christ.158 Regarding the first line,
Matthew Baker has argued that Torrance denies not a human will but only a
fallen will to Christ.159 Both Rankin and Baker, though, neglect the immediate
context of this line, which concerns the Virgin Birth and recalls points made
in Torrance’s discussion of it on the previous four pages. In them he repeatedly
applies Jn 1.13 (‘born, not … of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man’)
to Christ. Torrance’s line that Christ’s flesh ‘was created … without the will of
fallen humanity’ refers to Christ’s conception in the absence of initiative of
a fallen will external to him.160 Christ’s own human will is not in view here.
Regarding the lack of human ‘personality’ in Christ, Torrance’s quotation of
Brunner clearly distinguishes the meaning from a psychological conception of
the term.161 What Brunner and Torrance mean by ‘personality’ is ‘personhood’,
and the doctrine that Christ’s humanity is anhypostatic, lacking its own person,
is orthodox, not Apollinarian.162

1.3.2 Christology after Auburn

We now turn to Torrance’s later works to test Rankin’s and Chiarot’s claims
of a shift in his fallenness view. First the continuity must be underscored.
In his 1952–78 lectures as professor at New College, Edinburgh, Torrance
sounds familiar notes:163 God’s Son assumed fallen, sinful flesh, yet in so
doing fully sanctified it;164 and throughout his earthly life, he experienced the
progressive outworking of that sanctification through costly obedience and
identification with sinners, coupled with increasing opposition not only from
sinners and Satan against his holiness but also from God against his vicarious

158
Carnal Union, pp. 104–9, using Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. 122 (no fallen will or human person),
124–5 (no human person or personality).
159
‘The Place of St. Irenaeus of Lyons in Historical and Dogmatic Theology According to Thomas F.
Torrance’, Participatio 2 (2010), pp. 23–4. Cited 21 January 2011. Online: http://www.tftorrance.org/
journal/participatio_vol_ 2_2010.pdf. Radcliff, Thomas F. Torrance and the Church Fathers, pp. 97,
107, repeats Baker’s claim.
160
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. 118–21 (Jn 1.13 is alluded to on each page). Chiarot, ‘Non-Assumptus’,
p. 230, n. 6, concurs with my interpretation.
161
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, p. 124.
162
Rankin’s misunderstanding of Doctrine of Jesus Christ on this point is puzzling, given that he devotes
pp. 128–45 of Carnal Union to interpreting Torrance’s later use of the concept of anhypostasia.
163
McGrath, T. F. Torrance, pp. 92–4, evaluates the relationship between the Auburn and Edinburgh
lectures as one of development within essential continuity. Cf. Torrance, Incarnation, p. vii.
164
Incarnation, pp. 61–4, 82, 98, 100, 204, 232.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 37

sinfulness.165 Torrance’s writings after retiring from New College maintain

these themes.166
Perhaps the clearest, most concise indicator of his continuity with the Auburn
lectures on the subject of fallenness is a 1984 letter to the editor of The Monthly
Record of the Free Church of Scotland. What provoked Torrance’s letter was an
article by the editor, Donald Macleod, which challenged Irving’s and Barth’s
ascriptions of fallenness to Christ’s humanity as necessarily implying Christ’s
sinfulness, despite both Irving’s and Barth’s denials of this implication.167
Torrance’s letter concurs with Macleod that Christ ‘was altogether sinless,
having neither actual nor inherent sin of any kind. … [Macleod] is again very
right in stating that “fallenness” does not characterize true human nature, and
that Christ Himself had true human nature.’ The problem lies in Macleod’s
asking, ‘Did Christ HAVE a fallen human nature?’ Rather than this static
conception of Christ’s constitution, we must see that ‘in the very act of taking
our fallen Adamic nature the Son of God redeemed, renewed and sanctified
it AT THE SAME TIME. … The only human nature which our Lord HAD,
therefore, was utterly pure and sinless.’168
Yet there are changes from the Auburn lectures. Perhaps most obvious
is the dearth of further reference to Irving.169 Even Torrance’s above-quoted
letter to the editor, written in response to attacks on Irving and Barth, names
neither man, instead appealing to the Greek fathers and Calvin. Torrance’s
later volume on Scottish theological history, in which he positively reviews the

165
Incarnation, pp. 61–2, chs 4 and 7 passim, 204–6 (111–12 repeat almost verbatim the block quote
from CD II/1, pp. 397–8 given in 1.2.2 above); Atonement, pp. 149–53, 161–2.
166
T. F. Torrance, ‘The Atonement. The Singularity of Christ and the Finality of the Cross: The
Atonement and the Moral Order’, Universalism and the Doctrine of Hell (ed. N. M. de S. Cameron;
Carlisle: Paternoster, 1992), pp. 223–56 (236–9); idem, Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and
Scientific Thinking (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 58–9; Mediation, pp. 63–71, 78–80, 84–5;
Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 250–2. K. W. Lee, Living in Union with Christ: The Practical Theology
of Thomas F. Torrance (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), p. 2, claims that Torrance’s ‘work is remarkably
consistent’ in content.
167
D. Macleod, ‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, The Monthly Record of the Free Church of
Scotland (March 1984), pp. 51–3.
168
T. F. Torrance, ‘Christ’s Human Nature’, The Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland (May
1984), p. 114 (capitalization his). Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, p. 112, n. 264, alerted me to this letter’s
existence.
169
T. F.’s brother James, however, mentions Irving favourably alongside Barth in J. B. Torrance, ‘The
Vicarious Humanity of Christ’, The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan
Creed A.D. 381 (ed. T. F. Torrance; Edinburgh: Handsel, 1981), pp. 127–47 (141). James also
supervised Nantomah’s and Dorries’ theses on Irving (Nantomah, ‘Jesus the God-Man’, p. vii;
Dorries, Incarnational Christology, p. xi) and served as general editor for The Devotional Library
Series, which included G. McFarlane, Edward Irving: The Trinitarian Face of God (Edinburgh:
St. Andrews Press, 1996). Perhaps James’ openness to Irving was due to his not having studied under
Mackintosh, as Thomas did.
38 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

fallenness teachings of Irving’s confreres Thomas Erskine and John McLeod

Campbell, ignores Irving himself.170
Another change is in Torrance’s view of original sin. At Auburn he had
followed Brunner in locating original sin in one’s personhood and so denied
original sin to Christ on the basis that the Logos had assumed human nature
but not a human person – the person of Christ was the divine Logos.171 In
his later writings, however, Torrance relocates original sin to human nature.
This move allows him to affirm that in assuming fallen human nature, Christ
assumed original sin, only to annihilate it upon assumption.
Coupled with this relocation of original sin is a rising emphasis on Christ’s
assumption and conversion of the sinful human mind and will.172 Concerning
the mind, Torrance writes that

the holy Son of God assumed our … twisted, distorted, bent mind, but that
in assuming it right from the very beginning, our Lord converted it … in
himself. In taking from us our fallen human nature upon himself, instead of
sinning in it as we all do, Jesus condemned sin in our carnal mind, and was
himself wholly without sin. And so by living out a life of perfect holiness
and purity in his mind, he sanctified and healed our human mind in the
whole course of his incarnate and redemptive life from his birth to his
crucifixion. He carried our mind into the very depths of his agonising and
atoning struggle on the cross – he descended into the hell of the utmost
wickedness and dereliction of the human mind under the judgment of God,
in order to lay hold upon the very root of our sin and to redeem us from its
stranglehold upon us. Yes, it was not only our actual sins, but it was original
sin and original guilt that the Son of God took upon himself in incarnation
and atonement, in order to heal, convert, and sanctify the human mind in
himself and reconcile it to God.173

Note well the pronouns: our mind is perverse; his is pure. The sinlessness of
his mind condemns the sinfulness of ours. Yet his mind is still ‘our mind’ in

170
Torrance, Scottish Theology, pp. 263–77 (Erskine), 287–317 (Campbell); cf. Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’,
p. 103, n. 235.
171
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. 124–5.
172
T. F. Torrance, The Christian Frame of Mind (Edinburgh: Handsel, 1985), pp. 8–9; Mediation, pp.
39, 79–80; Preaching Christ Today, p. 59; Incarnation, pp. 117–18; Atonement, pp. 70, 163, 437–47.
Already in Doctrine of Jesus Christ, p. 94, he had spoken of how ‘our very minds have been warped
and our souls characterized by a radical self-sufficiency and selfishness’.
173
Atonement, p. 440 (emphasis his). Cf. Habets, ‘Fallen Humanity’, pp. 27–8, n. 41, 30–1, who denies
that Torrance’s Christ assumed original sin and guilt. Habets misses Torrance’s relocation of original
sin after Auburn.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 39

its ontological solidarity with ours – it is a human mind derived from a fallen
source. Despite being continuously converted and cleansed so as to be free
from the sin, including original sin,174 which Christ has assumed, it retains
certain marks of fallenness: first, in birth it is ignorant and requires the labour
of learning truth in a sin-darkened world; secondly, it must master obedience
amid temptation;175 and thirdly, although innocent, it takes responsibility for
others’ sin and so feels the ‘dereliction of the human mind under the judgment
of God’. Additionally, it endures the enmity and ignorance of its fellow humans’
minds.176 The progress of learning, obeying, and enduring requires that the
process of conversion continue apace, for every new situation and stage of
life requires to be reclaimed from the power of evil.177 Lastly, because of his
solidarity with us, the conversion of Christ’s human mind is the conversion of
‘our mind’, a reality in which we are called to share.178
Much the same may be said concerning the will:

It is in our place that Jesus prays, standing where we stand in our rebellion
and alienation, existing where we exist in our refusal of divine grace and
in our will to be independent, to live our own life in self-reliance. In that
condition, Jesus prays against the whole trend of our existence and against
all the self-willed movement of our life, for when Jesus prays it means that
he casts himself in utter reliance upon God the Father. … In this way, Jesus
prays … from within our alienation and in battle against our self-will. That
is the prayer we are given to overhear: ‘Not my will (that is, not the will of
the alienated humanity which Jesus has made his own), but thy will be done.’
Thus he offers from out of our disobedience, a prayer of obedience.179

Again, the shift in pronouns signals the mystery of the Incarnation: in making
our will, the will of alienated humanity, his own, Christ stands alongside us in
our alienated status but is free of self-will. His will thus combats and condemns

174
Incarnation, p. 232. According to T. F. Torrance (ed. and trans.), The School of Faith: The Catechisms
of the Reformed Church (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959), pp. lxxiv–lxxxvii, xciii, and Incarnation,
pp. 79–82, Christ overcomes our actual sins through obedience and our original sin through the
hypostatic union.
175
On these first two points, see Theology in Reconstruction, p. 132; T. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith:
The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), pp. 166–7,
186–8. In Incarnation, p. 212, Torrance claims that if Christ had a ‘neutral or perfect human nature’,
then the significance of his temptations is diminished.
176
Incarnation, pp. 142–6, 151–4.
177
Trinitarian Faith, pp. 166–7.
178
School of Faith, pp. xxxv–xxxviii; Atonement, pp. 69–70, 442–7; Mediation, pp. 84–6.
179
Incarnation, pp. 117–18.
40 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

the self-will present in the rest of us.180 Where we disobey, there he instead
prays. The effect is our conversion: Christ ‘bend[s] the will of man back into
oneness with the divine will’.181
We now are prepared to evaluate the Torrance scholars’ positions presented
at the start of 1.3 above. Kang’s identification of Torrance’s view with Irving’s
runs afoul of Torrance’s own handling of Irving. Kang is right, however, to
see Torrance as teaching that Christ’s fallenness was his subjection to sorrow,
infirmities, and others’ conflict with God while himself remaining at peace
with God. Rankin’s evidence for the early Torrance’s Apollinarianism is
misinterpreted; yet the later Torrance does discuss Christ’s mind and will to a
degree missing from the Auburn lectures. Rankin, Cass, and Chiarot wrongly
suggest or assert concupiscence in Torrance’s Christ. All three scholars misapply
what Torrance says of corporate humanity (i.e. that it is genuinely rebellious
and sinful) to Christ’s own humanity.182 For this reason too Chiarot’s charge
of incoherence fails: Christ is not progressively hardened; others are, as God’s
gracious initiative in Christ arouses their sinful resistance. Christ’s progressive
sanctification does not negate his full sanctification at conception, for he
does not become holier; rather, his full holiness extends itself into ever-new
situations. Nor is this holiness incompatible with Christ’s fallenness, which is a
bearing of the infirmities, temptations, and condemnation consequent upon the
Fall. Our analysis largely supports and supplements Habets’ interpretation.183

1.3.3 Appeal to scripture

Having described Torrance’s view in some detail, we turn to key biblical
sources, followed by patristic sources, by which he supports it. Torrance
frequently appeals to certain now-familiar Pauline pronouncements. He
quotes Rom. 8.3, God’s sending of his Son ‘in the likeness [Greek: homoiōma]

180
Chiarot, The Unassumed is the Unhealed, chs 4–5, misses this italicized point and sees Torrance’s
Christ as battling his own rebellious self-will throughout his earthly life.
181
Quote taken from Incarnation, p. 212; the thought is present in 119–20.
182
Another Torrance scholar who conjures up the spectre of concupiscence in Christ is G. S. Dawson,
‘Far as the Curse is Found: The Significance of Christ’s Assuming a Fallen Human Nature in the
Torrance Theology’, in An Introduction to Torrance Theology: Discovering the Incarnate Saviour (ed.
G. S. Dawson; London: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 55–74 (63). For more accurate interpretations, cf.
Lee, Living in Union with Christ, pp. 158–9; M. Habets, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance
(Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 72–5. On the difficulty of interpreting Torrance, see Lee, Living
in Union with Christ, pp. 6–7.
183
My main difference from Habets concerns Torrance’s shift after Auburn regarding original sin.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 41

of the flesh of sin’, claiming that homoiōma means ‘concrete likeness’. Likewise
he cites Paul’s statements that Christ became sin (2 Cor. 5.21) and a curse
(Gal. 3.13).184 In addition to these Pauline texts, Torrance often references the
Gospel accounts of Christ’s cry of dereliction (Mt. 27.46; Mk 15.34), which
express the extremity of his identification with our alienation, only to convert
it by his prayer of committal (Lk. 23.46).185
Occasionally, Torrance uses Hebrews’ claims of Christ’s identification with
us (2.17), sympathy with our weaknesses (4.15),186 distressed prayers, and
painful education in obedience (5.7, 8)187 as evidence of fellow-fallenness.
Concerning Jesus’ childhood in Lk. 2.52, Torrance ‘leans on the etymology
of the word for “grow” in that passage, as the old image of beating out metal
with blows. Effort is required to shape something the right way which has a
tendency to stay in the wrong shape.’188
Torrance also appeals to the Old Testament. Israel’s covenant history discloses
God’s ever-more-intimate relationship to Israel, simultaneous with Israel’s
ever-intensifying resistance to God. The Incarnation climactically recapitulates
this double dynamic as Jesus, like Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, absorbs both his
own people’s rejection of God and God’s wrath upon Israel’s sin.189

1.3.4 Critical retrieval of tradition

Torrance credits Barth, along with Mackintosh, with recovering the Greek
fathers’ teaching on Christ’s fallen flesh,190 but acknowledges that Barth

184
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. 121, 123, 164; T. F. Torrance, Theology in Reconciliation: Essays towards
Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975), pp. 153–4,
168, 170; ‘Atonement’, p. 237; ‘Christ’s Human Nature’, p. 114; Karl Barth, p. 202, n. 45; Theology
in Reconstruction, p. 161; Mediation, p. 40; Preaching Christ Today, p. 58; Incarnation, p. 61, 63,
199, 255, 256; Christian Doctrine of God, p. 226. (All these references use Rom. 8.3; some also use
the other Pauline passages.) In Doctrine of Jesus Christ, p. 109, Torrance discusses Paul’s use of
homoiōma in Phil. 2.7, claiming that homoiōma means ‘concrete likeness’ (italics his) as opposed to
mere ‘appearance or superficial likeness’, which would have been represented by the word homoiōsis.
185
Doctrine of Jesus Christ, pp. 122–3, 164, 174–6; Trinitarian Faith, pp. 185–6; Mediation, p. 43; cf.
79–80; Incarnation, pp. 61, 256; Atonement, pp. 150, 163, 212, 441; Christian Doctrine of God, p. 251.
186
Incarnation, pp. 112, 133–4, 146, 184.
187
Theology in Reconstruction, p. 132; Incarnation, p. 64.
188
Dawson, ‘Far as the Curse is Found’, pp. 66–7. See Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, p. 132;
Incarnation, pp. 64, 106. The Greek word for ‘grow’ is prokoptō. Cf. CD I/2, p. 158.
189
Incarnation, pp. 37–56; Mediation, ch. 2. Cf. CD IV/1, pp. 171–5; Chiarot, The Unassumed is the
Unhealed, ch. 2. Chiarot misinterprets Christ’s absorption of this double dynamic as implying enmity
between Christ’s own human will and God, as does Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, p. A-95, more tentatively.
190
Karl Barth, pp. 103–4, 161–2, 177, 179, 202–3 (Barth), 232; Atonement, p. 441 (Mackintosh).
42 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

himself makes ‘strangely few references’ to patristic precedent.191 Torrance

amply redresses this lack. His most-used supporting patristic slogans are
Gregory Nazianzen’s ‘The unassumed is the unhealed’192 (hereafter referred
to as the non-assumptus)193 and Cyril of Alexandria’s ‘What Christ has not
assumed, he has not saved.’194 He also cites Melito of Sardis, Irenaeus, Origen,
Marius Victorinus, Damasus, Hilary of Poitiers, Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea,
Gregory Nyssen, and Ambrose.195
In opposition to these early, mostly Eastern, theologians, Torrance ranges
Apollinarianism and the ‘Latin heresy’. He asserts that Apollinaris devised

191
Karl Barth, p. 202. As 1.2 above has shown, this statement downplays the truth, and Hastings’
claim that ‘Karl Barth … [has] made a strong case that patristic literature favours the view of the
assumption of a fallen human nature’ (‘“Honouring the Spirit”’, p. 287, citing CD I/2, pp. 147–59;
II/1, pp. 397–8) is flatly false.
192
Nazianzen’s Ep. 101, quoted in Karl Barth, pp. 103–4, 161, 179, 202, 231–2; ‘Atonement’, p. 237;
‘Christ’s Human Nature’, p. 114; Christian Frame of Mind, p. 9; Mediation, p. 39; Preaching Christ
Today, p. 58; Incarnation, pp. 62, 201; Atonement, p. 441; Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 250–1.
193
See Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, p. 99, n. 226, and Chiarot, ‘Non-Assumptus’, for precedents for this
shorthand reference.
194
Cyril’s In Ioannis Evangelium (J.-P. Migne [ed.], Patrologia graeca [162 vols; repr., Turnholti, Belgium:
Typographi Brepols Editores Pontificii, 1966] 74, p. 89c), quoted in ‘Atonement’, p. 237; ‘Christ’s
Human Nature’, p. 114; Karl Barth, pp. 104, 202; Preaching Christ Today, p. 58; Atonement, p. 441.
195
T. F. Torrance, Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995),
pp. 84–91 (Melito), 68–9 (Irenaeus), 191–5 (Athanasius); Reconciliation, pp. 143–71 (Athanasius,
the Cappadocians, and Cyril), 228–31 (Athanasius); Christian Frame of Mind, pp. 8–9 (Nazianzen);
Trinitarian Faith, pp. 101–2, 142, n. 111 (Athanasius), 153 (Nyssen and Basil), 156–7 (Irenaeus),
159–67 (Origen, Victorinus, Damasus, Hilary, Athanasius, Nazianzen, Nyssen, Ambrose), 267, 299
(Athanasius); Karl Barth, p. 202 (Irenaeus, Athanasius, Nazianzen, Nyssen, Cyril); ‘Christ’s Human
Nature’, p. 114 (Irenaeus, Athanasius, Nazianzen, Cyril); Atonement, pp. 440–1 (Irenaeus). Torrance
cites the following sources: Melito, Peri Pascha; Irenaeus, Epid. 5, 10, 24, 29–39, 53, 99; Haer. 2.33;
3.18.1-3; 3.19.5-6; 3.21.2 [These citations are, except for 3.18.1-3, incorrect; they should be 2.22;
3.19; 3.20.2]; 5.9.1; an unnamed, unnumbered Irenaean fragment; Origen, Dialogus cum Heraclide
7; Victorinus, Adv. Arium 3.3; Damasus, Ep. 2; Hilary, Trin. 1.13; 11.18-20 (‘However, Hilary had a
habit of qualifying what he said in this connection which appears to leave his conception of God’s
self-identification with sinful humanity somewhat ambiguous – see De Trin., 10.47-48; 11:16-7’
[Trinitarian Faith, p. 162, n. 54]); Athanasius, Ep. Adelph. 4–5; Tom. 7; Ep. Epict. 7; Ep. Serap. 1.6, 9;
2.9; C. Apoll. 1, 2; C. Ar. 1.37-64; 2.1-12, 14, 18, 47-48, 53-56, 65-72, 74-77; 3.19, 22-24, 27-28, 30-35,
38-40, 43-44, 52-57; 4.6-7, 33, 35-36; C. Gent. 40-42; Inc. 2–4, 9, 14–15, 44–45; In Psalmos 21.31;
50.12; Basil, Ep. 261.2-3; Nyssen, Adv. Apollinarem 26; Antirrh. adv. Apol. 26; C. Eunom. 2.13; Ep. adv.
Apollinarem (no further citation given); Or. cat. 14; Ambrose, Ep. 261.2 (This citation also is incorrect;
Torrance has reduplicated his citation of Basil. The correct citation remains unidentified); Nazianzen,
Ep. 101; Or. 1.23; 2.23-25; 4.5-6; 22.13; 30.5-6, 21; Cyril, In Jo. Ev. (PG 74, pp. 89c, 157d–160a, 273b–
76d, 535c–52b, 576c–85d, 753b–56c); Ad Nestorium 3 (PG 77, p. 117a); Adv. anthropomorphitas
(PG 76, p. 1120bc); Adv. Nestorium 1, 3 (PG 76, pp. 21c, 132c, 164a–68b); C. Orientales (PG 76, pp.
321c–24a); Inc. unigen. (PG 75, pp. 1213a–17a); De recta fide ad reginas 2 (PG 76, pp. 1364c–68c); De
recta fide ad Theodosium (PG 76, pp. 1161b–d; 1164a); Dialogus de Trinitate (PG 75, pp. 681d–84a);
Glaphyra in Leviticum (PG 69, pp. 510ab, 548d–49d, 553a–80a); Homilia paschalis 10 (PG 77, pp.
617b–d); In epist. ad Corinthos (PG 74, pp. 936c, 944a); In epist. ad Hebraeos (PG 74, pp. 968b–d); In
epist. ad Romanos (PG 74, pp. 817d–20b); Quod unus sit Christus (PG 75, pp. 1208bc, 1268bc, 1275c,
1304d–05a, 1305c, 1320d, 1337b–40a, 1352b–56c, 1360a–61c); Scholia (PG 75, pp. 1383a, 1390c–
91a, 1373d–74d, 1382c–83d); Thesaurus (PG 75, pp. 272d–73a, 392d–401b, 468d–69a). Radcliff,
Thomas F. Torrance and the Church Fathers, constructively evaluates Torrance’s handling of patristic
sources. Unfortunately, Radcliff ’s appendix (201–14) repeats Torrance’s incorrect patristic references.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 43

his view that Christ lacked a human mind not only for ontological reasons
(How can one person have two minds, that is, two control-centres?) but also
for soteriological reasons (If sin is rooted in the human mind, then how could
Christ be sinless if he had a human mind?).196 Against this background, the
anti-Apollinarian writings of Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and Cyril affirm
Christ’s assumption not only of a human mind, but also of a sinful human
mind which he heals.
The ‘Latin heresy’ is Torrance’s term for Western Christianity’s historic
tendency to think only in terms of external relations, one manifestation of
which is to attribute to Christ an unfallen humanity.197 Leo’s Tome is a prime
example,198 although Tertullian and Augustine share the blame for the
West’s bifurcation of Christ’s humanity from ours.199 Torrance also faults the
Chalcedonian Definition’s failure clearly to indicate that Christ’s humanity was
fallen, not neutral.200 The ‘Latin heresy’ has infected most Western theology
from the fifth century forward. Among those who have escaped its influence,
Torrance lists Peter Lombard, Martin Luther, John McLeod Campbell, H. R.
Mackintosh, and Karl Barth.201
Torrance thus agrees with Barth’s fallenness view but disagrees with his
evaluations of the fathers and Irving. If the Swiss divine’s brief endorsement
gave Irving a reprieve from the verdict of heresy, Barth’s Scots successor cast its
shadow back over his compatriot. It remained for another Barth scholar – an
Englishman – to promote Irving’s Christology enthusiastically.

1.4 The world, the flesh, and the Spirit: Colin Gunton

Colin E. Gunton (1941–2003) taught at King’s College, University of London,

from 1969 until his unexpected death in 2003.202 Through his lectures, writings,

196
Theology in Reconciliation, pp. 143–6; Atonement, p. 439.
197
Karl Barth, pp. 215–16, 229–32; cf. 202–3; ‘Atonement’, p. 238; Preaching Christ Today, pp. 58–9; cf.
Mediation, pp. 39–40.
198
Christian Frame of Mind, pp. 9, 10; Karl Barth, pp. 203, 232.
199
Theology in Reconciliation, p. 230; Christian Frame of Mind, p. 10; Divine Meaning, pp. 193–4.
200
Incarnation, pp. 200–2.
201
Karl Barth, p. 232; Preaching Christ Today, p. 59.
202
S. R. Holmes, ‘Obituary: The Rev Prof Colin Gunton’, The Guardian (3 June 2003), n.p. Cited
13 September 2010. Online: www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/jun/03/guardianobituaries.
highereducation.
44 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

founding of the Research Institute in Systematic Theology, and co-founding

and co-editing of the International Journal of Systematic Theology, Gunton
significantly influenced anglophone theology.203 As his former doctoral
supervisor, Robert Jenson, claimed in his obituary for Gunton, ‘It is not too
much to say that, through his books and the people he influenced, he has been
the leading agent of a transformation of the British theological landscape.’204
From the days of his doctoral thesis until his death, Gunton spent
his theological career in critically constructive appropriation of Barth’s
theology.205 Yet whenever Gunton discusses Christ’s fallen flesh, he appeals not
to Barth (whom he critiques as not taking this point seriously enough)206 but
to Irving. Gunton became aware of Irving through reading CD I/2. Unlike
Barth, though, he went on to read Irving’s writings for himself and unearthed
in them much material for his own theological agenda.207 As an indication of
both men’s influence upon him, Gunton included an engraving of Irving, as
well as a photograph of Barth, in his office-wall gallery of mentors.208

1.4.1 A fallen network

Gunton’s appropriation of Irving must be understood in light of Gunton’s
theme of relationality. All things exist only within networks of relationships

203
Holmes, ‘Obituary’; G. McFarlane, ‘Profile: Colin E. Gunton’, Catalyst 27 (2001), p. 2. Cited 13
September 2010. Online: http://catalystresources.org/issues/272mcfarlane.html; ‘King’s announces
the 2003 Fellows’. Cited 13 September 2010. Online: www.kcl.ac.uk/news/wmprint.php?news_
id=225& year=2003; L. Harvey, introduction, The Theology of Colin Gunton (ed. L. Harvey; London:
T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 1–7 (1).
204
R. W. Jenson, ‘Colin Gunton (1940–2003)’, Theology Today 61.1 (April 2004), p. 85. Note: According
to Holmes, ‘Obituary’, Gunton was born in 1941.
205
As attested by Gunton’s colleagues C. Schwöbel, foreword, and S. R. Holmes, introduction to
C. E. Gunton, The Barth Lectures (ed. P. H. Brazier; London: Continuum, 2007), pp. xx–xxi and
1, respectively. On Gunton’s debts to and disputes with Barth’s theology, see J. Webster, ‘Gunton
and Barth’, Theology of Colin Gunton, pp. 17–31. On Gunton’s significant contributions to British
Barth reception, see Morgan, Barth Reception, p. 283, and D. Knight, ‘From Metaphor to Mediation:
Colin Gunton and the Concept of Mediation’, Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und
Religionsphilosophie 43.1 (2001), pp. 118–36 (120).
206
C. Gunton, foreword to T. Weinandy, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of
Christ (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), pp. ix–xi (x). For a book-length rebuttal on Barth’s behalf, cf.
Jones, Humanity of Christ.
207
C. E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2nd edn, 1997), pp. 34,
69; Barth Lectures, p. 193; D. A. Höhne, Spirit and Sonship: Colin Gunton’s Theology of Particularity
and the Holy Spirit (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), p. 36. The first fruit of Gunton’s reading of Irving
was what Höhne terms a ‘watershed essay on Irving’s Christology’ (36), C. Gunton, ‘Two Dogmas
Revisited: Edward Irving’s Christology’, SJT 41.3 (1988), pp. 359–76, repr. in C. E. Gunton, Theology
through the Theologians: Selected Essays 1972–1995 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), pp. 151–68.
208
Holmes, introduction to Barth Lectures, p. 1.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 45

which constitute them as the particular things that they are.209 God is three
particular persons who are who they are only in relation to one another, and
God makes the world and humans in such a way that they reflect finitely the
divine reciprocal reality.210 Thus humans are of a piece with the rest of the
created order,211 yet the universe cannot achieve its God-ordained destiny
apart from the perfecting, priestly role of humankind.212
Humans are constituted not only by their relation to God and the world,
but also by their relation to one another. Heredity and social environment
both act as conditioners of individual human persons, who in turn condition
others. This does not mean that humans lack free will, however: one freely
chooses what to do with one’s inheritance and social location.213 The doctrine
of the Fall explains the alienation and strife within these relational networks.
Whether or not there was a literal Adam or a historical moment at which the
Fall occurred,214 the doctrine is true to reality: the intergenerational cycle
of abuse is one instance of the ‘essentially social form’ of human depravity
traditionally named original sin, whose fatal legacy individuals act upon
‘inevitably but voluntarily’.215 Humanity’s collective wrongdoing takes on a life
of its own, corrupting the social structures which shape human existence – the
‘principalities and powers’ – so they become demonic.216
For Gunton, ‘The essence of sin is to attempt to be like God in ways other
than that laid down for those who, because they are finite in time and space,
are also limited in their capacity for knowledge and achievement.’ Sin is thus

209
C. E. Gunton, Christ and Creation (Bletchley, UK: Paternoster, 2005), pp. 36–44.
210
Promise, pp. 83–117, 137–57; Christ and Creation, pp. 43–6, 101; C. E. Gunton, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit: Essays toward a Fully Trinitarian Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2003), pp. 3–18; cf. C. E.
Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993). For two accounts of Gunton’s development to his mature
Trinitarian philosophy of personhood and relationality, see S. R. Holmes, ‘Towards the Analogia
Personae et Relationis’ and Christoph Schwöbel, ‘The Shape of Colin Gunton’s Theology. On the
Way towards a Fully Trinitarian Theology’, Theology of Colin Gunton, pp. 32–48 and 182–208,
respectively.
211
C. E. Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1998), 186–7; idem, The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell,
2002), pp. 38–9.
212
Christ and Creation, pp. 102–3, 119–22.
213
Ibid., pp. 38–40.
214
C. E. Gunton, Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1983), pp. 174–5; Christ and Creation, p. 45; Christian Faith, pp. 61–2.
215
Christian Faith, pp. 61–2 (quotes from p. 61).
216
C. E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian
Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 65–73; Christian Faith, pp. 137, 167–70. Cf. ‘Two
Dogmas’, p. 368; Triune Creator, p. 189; Christian Faith, p. 60, n. 1.
46 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

the reverse image of the Incarnation, in which the eternal Son displays God’s
true likeness by taking upon himself human finitude in order to reconcile
the world to God.217 Yet not only does the Word become finite flesh, but
fallen flesh.
Following Irving, Gunton supplies ontological and soteriological justifi­
cations for the claim that Christ assumed a fallen humanity.218 Ontologically,
the whole creational network lies subjected to evil and death. Barring an ex
nihilo event, the Son must take flesh from the mass of fallen creation.219 This
he did by drawing his humanity from his mother, who was herself thoroughly
fallen.220 Furthermore, Christ was born and lived in the midst of a fallen
society. Thus through both heredity and social setting, Christ was conditioned
by fallenness.221
The ontological rationale serves the soteriological: if Christ had not entered
creation’s web of fallen relations, he could not have brought salvation to it.
As we shall explore in detail later, the fallen flesh which he assumes becomes
the medium through which he works healing into the fabric of the universe.
Important as Christ’s participation in fallenness is for Gunton, however, it is
equally vital to him to insist that Christ never committed sin. Uniquely among
human beings, Christ’s fallen nature never issued forth in sinful behaviour,222
even though he ‘exacerbated as much as healed’ the social conditions under
which he lived, thus contributing to their fallenness.223
Nevertheless, Gunton notes the ambiguity bound up in the language of
fallenness. Thus he critiques Irving:

Edward Irving, using language too subject to misunderstanding, spoke of

Christ’s ‘sinful’ or ‘fallen’ flesh. Because it is people, not flesh, who sin and
are fallen perhaps it would make the point more adequately if we were to say
that the matter from which the Spirit builds a body for the Son is that same
corrupt matter as that which constitutes persons of other human beings.224

217
Christian Faith, p. 60; cf. C. E. Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation: An Essay towards a Trinitarian
Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), p. 154.
218
‘Two Dogmas’, pp. 366–8.
219
Christ and Creation, p. 53, n. 13; Triune Creator, pp. 223–4.
220
Actuality, pp. 130–1; Christ and Creation, pp. 50–2; Christian Faith, p. 99; C. E. Gunton, Theology
through Preaching: Sermons for Brentwood (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), pp. 70–1.
221
Christian Faith, pp. 101–2.
222
‘Two Dogmas’, p. 369; Atonement, p. 132; Christian Faith, pp. 101–2, 108; Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
p. 152; Theology through Preaching, pp. 174–6.
223
Christian Faith, p. 101.
224
Ibid., p. 102.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 47

This ambiguity is especially pronounced when Gunton considers Christ’s

inner experience:

Did Jesus have ‘sinful impulses’, as is often asked? That depends upon
what is meant. If entertaining the suggestion that he might worship the
devil … is a sinful impulse, then he did. What is at stake is not what was
entertained, but whether what is entertained involves already the broken
relation to God in which sin consists. The point of the confession ‘like us
in all things sin apart’ is that the one who brings redemption is not himself
in need of redemption, but lives victoriously in the realm of death as its
conqueror.225

In these two passages, Gunton associates the terms ‘sinful’ and ‘fallen’ with
moral culpability and suggests that such culpability should not be ascribed
to physical human nature (‘flesh’) apart from the person to whom it belongs.
Human physicality is ‘corrupt matter’ in the sense of being prone to decay;
human persons fall into sin. The term ‘sinful’ is best reserved for persons, not
their physical natures;226 yet the term remains elastic, meaning either being
drawn towards potential sin or actually partaking of sin. Regarding the term
‘fallen’, Gunton is even vaguer, affirming nebulously that Christ ‘in some way
shares our fallen condition’.227
How, though, does Christ keep from sinning despite sharing our fallenness?
How does a single sinless-though-fallen life effect universal redemption? In
order to answer these questions, we must bring in Gunton’s pneumatology.

1.4.2 Flesh and Spirit

Gunton denies that Jesus was directed or empowered by his own divine
nature as the eternal Word. In the Incarnation, ‘God the Son self-emptied
into the condition of the flesh, the while remaining fully himself.’228 To be
‘flesh’ means to be frail and dependent.229 As God in the flesh, then, Christ’s
kenotic ignorance and weakness paradoxically demonstrate the divine

225
Ibid., p. 108.
226
In Christ and Creation, p. 51, Gunton transgresses this rule by speaking of ‘the soil of sinful earth’
whence Christ takes his humanity.
227
Christian Faith, p. 101; cf. Theology through Preaching, pp. 174–6.
228
Christian Faith, p. 103.
229
Ibid., pp. 39, 102–3.
48 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

omniscience and omnipotence.230 His every act is simultaneously fully divine

(for he remains the eternal Word) and fully human (for he is the Word made
flesh).231
But if God the Son exercises no superhuman control over his humanity,
finite and fallen as it is, whence are his miraculous powers and perfect
alignment with his Father’s will? Here Gunton draws from Irving’s
pneumatology232 while faulting Barth for following Irving’s Christology
regarding the flesh but not the Spirit.233 By the Spirit, Christ faithfully
performs God’s will and works. The Spirit’s role is always to perfect, whether
by completing the life of the Trinity or by moving the world towards its
eschatological fulfilment. The Spirit shapes the course of Christ’s earthly
life, perfecting him through resistance to temptation and resilience in his
mission, until on the Cross he offers his perfected humanity as a blameless
sacrifice to God.234
Gunton’s pneumatology resolves for him the ancient dilemma of Christ’s
impeccability. If Christ was unable to sin, says Gunton, then his life’s
outcome was so ‘preprogrammed’ as to make all his trials and temptations –
indeed, his humanity – meaningless. If, though, Christ was able not to sin,
this falsifies his fallenness: postlapsarian human nature requires grace to
avoid sinning. Gunton’s solution is that Christ was enabled by the Holy
Spirit not to sin.235 The Spirit does not ‘preprogram’ but bestows liberty to
live up to the Father’s calling, and Jesus uses this gift to stay true to his
mission.236

230
Yesterday and Today, pp. 161–2, 172; Christ and Creation, pp. 79–89; Christian Faith, pp. 92–5, 114,
189; Theology through Preaching, pp. 81–3, 198–9; Barth Lectures, pp. 166–7.
231
Christ and Creation, p. 81; Christian Faith, pp. 79, 95. A. Spence, ‘The Person as Willing Agent:
Classifying Gunton’s Christology’, Theology of Colin Gunton, pp. 49–64, maps Gunton’s Christology
in relation to Nicene–Chalcedonian orthodoxy and the ancient Christological heresies. Spence finds
in Gunton an Irenaean Christology insufficient to avoid Arianism.
232
Promise, pp. 34, 68–9; Theology through the Theologians, p. 115. For what follows on Gunton’s
nexus of Christology and pneumatology, see further in P. Cumin, ‘The Taste of Cake: Relation and
Otherness with Colin Gunton and the Strong Second Hand of God’, Theology of Colin Gunton, pp.
69–72.
233
C. E. Gunton, ‘The triune God and the Freedom of the Creature’, Karl Barth: Centenary Essays
(ed. S. W. Sykes; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 46–68 (63–4). For a Barthian
response, see Webster, ‘Gunton and Barth’, p. 28.
234
Christ and Creation, pp. 46–63; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, pp. 144–63; cf. The One, the Three and the
Many, pp. 180–209.
235
Christian Faith, pp. 105–6; cf. Christ and Creation, pp. 11, 54; Barth Lectures, p. 194.
236
Promise, pp. 37, 66–7. Knight, ‘From Metaphor to Mediation’, critiques Gunton’s critique of
Robert Jenson’s unconcern regarding Jesus’ sinlessness, but Knight’s conclusion (133) sounds
Guntonian.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 49

1.4.3 Renewing the world

The Son’s mission is to restore and perfect the trajectory of lapsed creation by
uniting himself in the Virgin’s womb with a sample taken from the fallen whole,
then purifying and reorienting that sample through a lifetime of obediently
reversing Adam’s failure. In Christ’s crucifixion, his obedience is perfected by
his summative self-offering to God – the very destiny for which God created
humanity and the cosmos, albeit realized under the conditions of evil. God
responds by raising Christ from the dead by the Spirit, thus liberating this
sample of creation fully from the Fall and actualizing a prototype of all things’
destiny. Because of the interrelatedness of the cosmos, one part’s perfection
reverberates throughout the whole. The ascended Christ pours out upon
humanity the Spirit who perfected him. Within human endeavours, the Spirit
inspires present anticipations of the future universal perfection in the general
resurrection and the new heavens and new earth.237

1.4.4 A second glance backward and forward

Gunton’s advocacy has been welcomed by this chapter’s concluding theologian.
While never grounding the doctrine of Christ’s fallen flesh in extensive
engagement with scripture or pre-Reformation Christian tradition,238 Gunton
wrote a commendatory foreword to our final theologian’s treatise on biblical
and historical precedents for this doctrine. To this book and its author we
now turn.

1.5 Broadening consensus: Thomas Weinandy

In Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM Cap. (b. 1946), the doctrine of an Incarnation

in fallen flesh has crossed continental and confessional boundaries. The
proponents examined thus far have been European and Reformed. Weinandy

237
Actuality, pp. 130–40, 170, 202; Promise, pp. 180–92; Triune Creator, pp. 228–36; Christ and Creation,
pp. 19, 29, 60–3, 80–1, 90–2, 100–3, 110–16; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, pp. 153–63, 192–9. Gunton
favours universalism but allows for annihilationism (Christian Faith, pp. 164–6).
238
In Father, Son and Holy Spirit, p. 192, he does mention in passing and without citation ‘the anti-
Apollinarian theologians’ who affirmed Christ’s fallen human nature (quoted in Cumin, ‘Taste’,
p. 69). In ‘Two Dogmas’, p. 366, he twice paraphrases Nazianzen’s non-assumptus.
50 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

is an American Catholic theologian.239 His 1993 monograph In the Likeness

of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of Christ presents a sustained case
from scripture and tradition for the fallenness of Christ’s humanity. Weinandy
obtained a foreword from Gunton and, in the book, acknowledges his debt to
Gunton’s pivotal article on Irving’s Christology.240 Within the book’s compass,
Weinandy also surveys the contributions of Irving and Barth.241

1.5.1 Conceiving sinful flesh aright

As a faithful Catholic, Weinandy insists that there are two examples of a
human being who bears sinful flesh but does not sin in it: Jesus and, due to the
Immaculate Conception, his mother.242 Catholic doctrine teaches that Jesus
and Mary were both free from concupiscence, the inward proclivity towards
sin. Weinandy affirms this teaching243 and so must define what it means to
bear ‘sinful flesh’ without concupiscence. For him, it means to inherit one’s
humanity from a lineage of sinners stretching back to Adam.244 It dooms one
to suffer both bodily and psychologically from ‘hunger and thirst, sickness and
sorrow, temptation and harassment by Satan, being hated and despised, fear
and loneliness, even death and separation from God’.245 Lack of concupiscence
preserved Jesus and Mary from moral defect246 and thus from inward
temptation, yet their sanctity only made their experience of temptation greater
than our own.247 Weinandy does seem to allow for sin to have affected Christ’s

239
‘Curriculum Vitae: Revd. Dr. Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap.’, n.p. Cited 22 March 2011. Online:
http://thomasweinandy.com/cv.html.
240
Likeness, p. 57, n. 6.
241
Ibid., pp. 56–61 (Irving), 61–4 (Barth), 64–70. Weinandy relies on a single primary source each for
Irving (CW 5) and Barth (CD I/2) and misinterprets Irving in the following line: ‘Irving believed
that to rely solely on the Son’s divinity as the solitary source of holiness within the humanity of
Jesus bordered on Docetism or Monophysitism’ (59, italics mine). This phraseology implies that the
holiness of Christ’s humanity was a joint product of the Son’s divinity and the Spirit’s activity. Section
1.1.1 above has shown that Irving repudiated any ascription of the holiness of Christ’s humanity to
his divinity; for Irving, the Holy Spirit was ‘the solitary source of holiness within the humanity of
Jesus’.
242
Gunton’s foreword to Likeness (x) asks after the Mariological implication of Weinandy’s attribution
of sinful flesh to Jesus. Weinandy responds in a postscript (153–6). Inasmuch as Irving (CW 1, 589)
and Torrance (Mediation, 40) expressly link belief in the Immaculate Conception with rejection of
Christ’s sinful flesh, it is noteworthy that a Catholic theologian affirms both.
243
Likeness, pp. 18, 98–100 (Jesus), 155–6 (Mary).
244
Ibid., pp. xiii, 17–18, 25, 27, 128, 153, 155.
245
Ibid., p. 18.
246
Ibid., pp. 42–3, 155.
247
Ibid., pp. 100, 155. Weinandy’s rationale is that concupiscence entails an inner weakness that saps
one’s strength to resist before temptation peaks. Lack of concupiscence meant that Jesus and Mary
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 51

inner self at a sub-moral level, for he writes, ‘By fending off temptation, Jesus
was reversing, in his own human mind, will, and emotions, the condition in
which we, in our human psyche, have been bound by Satan since the Fall.’248
Does ‘sinful flesh’ of this sort include original sin?249 Weinandy carefully
qualifies his answer. From the moment of conception, both Mary and Jesus
were shielded from the moral pollution of original sin but not from its amoral
effects of passibility, temptability, and mortality.250 Despite this qualifier,
Weinandy claims that it is Christ’s death in ‘sinful flesh’ on the Cross that
exposes the reality of original sin.251

1.5.2 The testimony of the New Testament

Weinandy devotes a division of his monograph to an examination of the New
Testament materials which support his contention. He begins with the Pauline
passages. Romans 8.3, which provides the title of his book, describes ‘Jesus’
radical conformity to and solidarity with our sinful flesh (sarx). He too knew
the dominion of sinful flesh made visible on the Cross where that flesh was
condemned (cf. Rom. 8.3-4). Our sinful condition was made manifest and
fully exposed in and through Jesus’ humanity.’252 For Paul, sarx generally means
‘the whole person absorbed in complete self-centeredness and engrossed in
the desires and passions of this earthly life’.253 Likewise, Rom. 6.6-7 describes
how the ‘sinful body’ that Christ shares with us died when it was crucified
on Calvary. This ‘sinful body’ refers to ‘the whole person mastered by the
disposition of sin’.254 Thus Christ became a sin offering for us by becoming sin
(2 Cor. 5.21), assuming the poverty (2 Cor. 8.9) and slavery (Phil. 2.7) of our

were able to withstand to the point of enduring maximal temptation. Weinandy notes, ‘According
to our principle, the holier one becomes, the more intense will be one’s temptations. The lives of the
saints seem to bear this out’ (100, n. 11).
248
Ibid., p. 102.
249
While the magisterial reformers, following one strand of earlier tradition, identified concupiscence
with original sin, the Council of Trent officially distinguished the two. Concupiscence was seen as
inclining one towards sin but not as being sin in itself. See ‘Original Sin’, ODCC (2005), n.p. Cited
18 May 2012. Online: http://www.oxford-christianchurch.com/entry?entry=t257.e5017. Weinandy
follows the Tridentine distinction.
250
Likeness, pp. 42–3, 98–9, 155–6. Weinandy explains that Mary’s preservation from the moral damage
of original sin includes her freedom from estrangement from God, original guilt, and concupiscence
(155).
251
Ibid., p. 84, n. 12.
252
Ibid., p. 80.
253
Ibid., p. 76.
254
Ibid., p. 75; cf. 82–90.
52 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

subjugation to sin. He entered into this state by being ‘born of a woman’ and
‘born under the law’ (Gal. 4.4-5) – both of which phrases Weinandy takes as
implying participation in sin.255
Turning to the Gospels, Weinandy detects in Jesus’ genealogy a stress
on the marked sinfulness of the messianic line. His baptism of repentance,
temptations, healing of the ill and leprous, thirst by the Samaritan well, and
fellowship with sinners at table and on Golgotha all signal his ontological
identification with our sinful state.256 His cry of dereliction does so as well,
although Weinandy denies that it was a cry of despair. Instead, he reads it as a
prayer of faith and hope from out of the midst of Christ’s estrangement from
his Father.257 John’s Gospel makes clear that the Word became not merely sōma
(humanity per se) but sarx (sinful humanity), a divine sanctuary stained by sin
just as the former Israelite sanctuaries had been. He is lifted up on the Cross
like the bronze serpent in the wilderness to display to the world the sinfulness
of the sarx which he shares with all humankind.258
Lastly, Weinandy looks to the Letter to the Hebrews. Rather than interpreting
it as contrasting sinful Aaronic priests with a sinless messianic priest, he takes
the reverse view: Hebrews opposes the earthly priests’ ceremonial purity
and physical perfection with the heavenly priest’s full self-identification with
human sin. Jesus’ sympathy with our weakness in the face of temptation is only
possible because he himself has shared that weakness, which is due to his and
our shared sinful condition.259
In reflecting upon the biblical data that Weinandy has gathered, it bears
noting that his definitions of ‘flesh’ and ‘sinful body’ appear to stand in tension
with his denials that Christ possessed original sin and concupiscence. For if

255
Likeness, pp. 78–82. On p. 78, Weinandy glosses ‘born of a woman’ as follows:
Paul accentuated that the Son was born of a woman, thus sharing a common humanity with all
who are born of women. However, within the biblical tradition, ‘to be born of a woman’ also
carried with it negative implications. For example: ‘How then can man be righteous before God?
How can he who is born of woman be clean?’ (Job 25.4; cf. 14.1; 15.14-16; Eccl. 5.15-17). For Jesus
to be born of a woman then meant that he too shared in our uncleanliness. He bore the trials and
endless toil associated with sin and evil.
With regard to ‘born under the law’, Weinandy notes that the Law of Moses was given to restrain evil
impulses but that it had the effect of exposing human sinfulness, thus becoming a curse to us. It was
under this curse that Christ was born (79). Cf. Weinandy’s coverage of 1 Pet. 2.23-24 on p. 90.
256
Ibid., pp. 93–104, 116, 127–8.
257
Ibid., pp. 122–3.
258
Ibid., pp. 112, 130.
259
Ibid., pp. 98, 132, n. 7.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 53

‘the whole person’ is ‘absorbed in complete self-centeredness and engrossed

in the desires and passions of this earthly life’, having been ‘mastered by the
disposition of sin’, how can the Saviour have had flesh and a sinful body without
such concupiscent characteristics? If, on the other hand, self-centredness and
a sinful disposition were lacking from Christ’s humanity, then how can the
crucifixion of such a humanity become ‘the hermeneutical foundation for the
doctrine of original sin’, revealing ‘that the inherited humanity in which we
were born (as too was Jesus) is so contaminated by sin and so deprived of
righteousness that it must die and be re-created in the risen Christ’?260

1.5.3 The testimony of tradition

As with scripture, so with ecclesiastical tradition: Weinandy uses a division
of his monograph to explore the doctrine of Christ’s fallen flesh in earlier
theologians’ thought. Yet Weinandy offers an important caveat at the outset:

Since no patristic treatises specifically address the question of whether

or not Jesus possessed a humanity tainted by the sin of Adam, we cannot
obtain an exact picture of what the various Fathers believed about this,
if they indeed had an opinion. … Nonetheless, relevant testimony is
available which allows us to determine, if not always precisely, the Fathers’
fundamental posture and the direction in which their Christological
thought was advancing.261

This remarkable cautionary note stands in contrast with Torrance’s retrievals

of the tradition, which can give the impression that the fathers and Barth teach
precisely the same doctrine as he does.262 Weinandy does, however, appeal to
Torrance’s Trinitarian Faith for patristic support.263
In order to trace the trajectory of the fathers’ thought, Weinandy
compiles testimonies to Christ’s salvific identification with the fallen human
race through his sinful human lineage, birth, inner feelings, temptations,
needs, ignorance, suffering, and death, yet without any concupiscence or

260
Ibid., p. 84, n. 12.
261
Ibid., p. 23.
262
As noted by Lee, Living in Union with Christ, pp. 6–7, and D. Fergusson, ‘Torrance as a Scottish
Theologian’, Participatio 2 (2010), pp. 86–7. Cited 21 January 2011. Online: http://www.tftorrance.
org/journal/participatio_vol_2_2010.pdf. Cf. Radcliff, Thomas F. Torrance and the Church Fathers,
pp. 116 n. 9, 147–55, 193.
263
Likeness, p. 30, n. 25.
54 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

commission of sin. Such testimonies come from Ignatius, Irenaeus, Origen,

Cyril of Jerusalem, Tertullian, Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, Ambrosiaster,
Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, John Chrysostom, the Council of Chalcedon,
and Cyril of Alexandria.264 Among those who, according to Weinandy, deny
such a thorough identification are Clement of Alexandria, Hilary of Poitiers,
Nestorius, and Julian of Halicarnassus.265
Weinandy takes special pains with two papal writings, Leo I’s Tome and
Honorius I’s pronouncement during the Monothelite Controversy. Leo states
that the Logos assumed our nature as it was created originally, along with its
infirmities, but that he did not assume the sin introduced by the Fall. Reading
this statement in light of Leo’s preaching elsewhere that God’s Son assumed
both our human substance and our sinful condition, Weinandy understands
Leo to affirm Christ’s bearing of the postlapsarian condition of sin-consequent
infirmities but not of the sin from whence these infirmities proceed. On the
other hand, Honorius declared that, in the Incarnation, ‘[T]hat nature was
assumed which was created before sin, and not that which was defiled after
the prevarication. … For another law is in our members; however the Savior
did not have a contrary or diverse will.’ Weinandy acknowledges the authority
of the pope’s statement but urges that ‘Honorius’ primary intention [was]
to uphold the harmony of wills within Christ and not to make a definitive
statement on the nature of Jesus’ humanity’; therefore Weinandy may safely

264
Ibid., pp. 25–36. Weinandy cites the following sources: Ignatius, Trallians 9 (cf. Smyrnaeans 1-4);
Irenaeus, Haer. 2.12.4; 3.12.3 [These first two references are irrelevant to Weinandy’s argument];
3.18.1, 7; 3.19.3; 3.21.10; 5.praef.; Origen, Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei and Homiliae in
Lucam; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses 4.9, 12.15; Tertullian, Marc. 2.27; Carn. Chr. 4–6, 16, 10–25;
Athanasius, Inc. 54; C. Ar. 1.43, 51, 60; 2.14, 47, 55, 66, 69-70; 3.31, 33, 38, 43, 57; Ambrose, Incarn.
76; Expositio Psalmi CXVIII 6, 22; Augustine, Agon. 12; Trin. 13.18; Enchir. 41; Tract. Ev. Jo. 3.12;
4.10; 10.11; 15.6; 41, 5; Serm. 185; Ambrosiaster, In ad Corinthios Secunda, 5, 21; Nazianzen, Ep.
101.7; Or. 38.13; Basil, Ep. 261.3; Chrysostom, Homiliae in epistulam ii ad Corinthianos 11.5, 21;
Chalcedon on Christ’s human consubstantiality, ‘for to be homoousios with us demands more than
a generic, ahistorical sameness of species, but a communion with us as we are in reality – brothers
and sisters defiled by the sin of Adam’ (35); Cyril of Alexandria, Adv. Nestorii blasphemias 1.1, 3.2;
De adoratione in spiritus et veritate, 3; Ep. ad Nestorium 2; Inc. unigen. 2, 12; and Quod unus sit
Christus. In his ‘Cyril and the Mystery of the Incarnation’, The Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria: A
Critical Appreciation (ed. T. G. Weinandy and D. A. Keating; London: T&T Clark, 2003), pp. 23–54,
Weinandy cites further support from Cyril’s In Jo. Ev. 1.14a; 3.5; 12.27; 14.20; 17.18-19; C. Nestorium,
1.1, 3, and Explicatio Duodecim Capitum, 2 and 10. In his Athanasius: A Theological Introduction
(Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 32–4, 42, 96–8, he also cites Athanasius’ Inc. 8–9, 44; C. Ar. 1.46-
48, 59; 2.10, 56, 61, 64, 67; Ep. Adelph. 4; Epistulae festales 6.4; 10.8; 11.14.
265
Likeness, pp. 23–5 (Clement and Hilary), 33 (Nestorius), 35, n. 39 (Julian). Weinandy cites Clement’s
Stromata 6.9 and Hilary’s Trin. 10.23-25. Weinandy’s inclusion of Nestorius is ironic, given that Cyril
of Alexandria accused him of compromising Christ’s sinlessness (see ch. 3.5 below).
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 55

disagree with Honorius’ assertion of Christ’s unfallen humanity266 without

denying papal infallibility.
Moving beyond the patristic period, Weinandy lauds Bernard of Clairvaux
and Thomas Aquinas as upholders of Christ’s sin-damaged humanity. Anselm,
however, and Catholic tradition after Thomas stand reproved for losing sight of
this truth.267 Weinandy also notes that three ecumenical councils have defined
that Christ was without sin (including concupiscence).268

1.5.4 Weinandy’s contributions

Weinandy’s monograph brings together in a summary fashion the insights
of the four fallenness theologians previously canvassed in this chapter. His
retrieval of church tradition supplies Gunton’s lacuna in this regard and
receives Gunton’s qualified approval.269 More significantly, this retrieval goes
beyond Torrance’s by rehabilitating Western theologians whom Torrance
holds as complicit in the ‘Latin heresy’. Weinandy thereby has broadened the
consensus historically as well as confessionally and geographically.

Conclusion

Through a survey of selected proponents, this chapter has traced the modern
development of the doctrine that Christ’s humanity was fallen, even sinful.
Edward Irving pioneered advocacy of this doctrine. His view was considered
heretical until Karl Barth endorsed him in the context of propounding his own
rather different fallenness view. Barth influenced T. F. Torrance (who likewise
engaged briefly with Irving); Barth and Irving influenced Colin Gunton; and
Gunton mediated Irving’s influence to Thomas Weinandy (who also interacted
with Barth and Torrance).
All five proponents agree that the terms ‘fallen’ and ‘sinful’ are appropriate
to describe the humanity assumed by Christ. They further agree that in the

266
Ibid., pp. 35–6 (Leo, citing Tome 2–4; Serm. 71.2 [misprinted as 7:2]), 36–7, n. 41 (Honorius). It is
Honorius’ pronouncement which Barth rejects in CD I/2, p. 153.
267
Likeness, pp. 40–52. Weinandy’s claiming of Aquinas for the fallenness side is challenged by Allen,
The Christ’s Faith, p. 128, n. 97; McFarland, In Adam”s Fall, p. 134, n. 14.
268
Those councils are Second Constantinople (AD 553), Lateran (AD 649), and Eleventh Toledo (AD
675) (Likeness, p. 52).
269
Gunton, foreword to Likeness, pp. ix–x.
56 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

nature which he assumed, he was subject to Fall-consequent infirmities (e.g.

temptation, suffering, mortality) yet never sinned. Beyond these points of
agreement lie substantive differences.
Regarding Christ’s conception, Irving describes it as preventing original
sin in his person and suppressing constitutional sin (specifically, the ‘law of
the flesh’ or guilty concupiscence) in his human nature. Barth and the mature
Torrance teach that Christ assumed human nature in its state of original sin
but healed it at the moment of conception, while taking responsibility before
God for the guilt of the rest of humanity. Gunton sees Christ as assuming a
physically corruptible body amid a sinful relational network but not guilt
thereby. Weinandy accepts the Immaculate Conception of Mary, whereby
the moral taint of original sin (including concupiscence and guilt) is denied
both to her and to Christ, although leaving them marked by its amoral effects.
Occasionally, Weinandy’s descriptions of the sinful human condition entered
by God’s Son strain against the denial of original sin and concupiscence to him.
Regarding Christ’s inner experience while on earth, Irving affirms a lifelong
mastering of already-guilty evil desires. Barth speaks of Christ’s inward
temptations but simply means that he felt sorrow and godforsakenness.
Torrance’s view concurs with Barth’s: neither of them attributes concupiscence
or self-will to Christ; both see the enmity under which he agonizes across his
lifetime as coming from sinners against God and God against sinners, not as
coming from Christ’s own heart. Gunton allows for Christ to have inclinations
towards sin without thereby sinning. Weinandy denies any inward, concupiscent
source of the temptations suffered by Christ but sees his resistance to them as
reversing the Fall’s psychological effects on his mind.
A final arena of contention among this chapter’s theologians concerns the
harmony of their doctrine with Christian tradition. Does the historic church,
both Greek and Latin, affirm the fallenness of Christ’s flesh (Irving) or not
(Barth)? Or is it the case that the Greeks are supportive while the Latin fathers
are not (Torrance)? Or is there a trajectory of both Greek and Latin validation
of this doctrine among the early fathers, with a consequent falling away from
the truth of Christ’s human fallenness during the Middle Ages, at least in the
Latin West (Weinandy)?270

270
Note that Weinandy’s medieval survey in Likeness only deals with Western theologians.
 The Rise and Progress of the Fallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 57

Chapter 2 will survey the appeals to the fathers and scripture by unfallenness
champions. Chapters 3 and 4 will focus on resolving the disputed appeals
to patristic sources by studying the fathers’ doctrinal writings and exegesis
of key biblical passages. Based on the findings, Chapter 5 will evaluate
the modern debate and offer final conclusions. To return to Mackintosh’s
epigram with which this chapter began, theology, wherever created and
however corrupted, may and must be corrected for the sake of the Lord and
the church which it serves.
58
 2

The Defence of the Unfallenness View

among Select Modern Theologians

Chapter 1 has chronicled the development of the modern fallenness view from
its emergence in the ministry of Edward Irving to its advocacy by Karl Barth,
T. F. Torrance, Colin Gunton, and, most recently, Thomas Weinandy. In Chapter 2,
we trace the history of the opposing view from early reactions to Irving through to
its contemporary expression. Four of the five unfallenness proponents surveyed
are Scots, a fact indicative of the depth of Irving’s impact upon his compatriots.
The other proponent, a resident in turn of four continents, redresses the otherwise
Caledonian concentration of this chapter. In examining these scholars’ positions,
we shall follow the same course as in Chapter 1, recording their biblical, patristic,
and theological appeals in a generally sympathetic manner.

2.1 Exposing Irving’s errings: Marcus Dods

When controversy first ensued regarding Irving’s Christological opinions,

perhaps his most significant opponent1 was a fellow Scots minister in England,
the elder Marcus Dods (1786–1838)2 of Belford, Northumberland. Dods, a
major contributor to the periodical The Edinburgh Christian Instructor, used
its pages to critique Irving’s view in 1830. The following year Dods published
a much-expanded rebuttal as a book, On the Incarnation of the Eternal Word.3

1
Nantomah, ‘Jesus the God-Man’, p. 214; Dorries, ‘Christological Controversy’, p. 424.
2
Not to be confused with his homonymous youngest son (1834–1909) who became a New Testament
professor at New College, Edinburgh. See ‘Marcus Dods – Definition’, in Encyclopædia Britannica
(1911); n.p. Cited 21 November 2011. Online: www.wordiq.com/definition/Marcus_ Dods.
3
Biographical information taken from Blaikie, ‘Dods, Marcus’; S. Isbell, ‘Dods, Marcus’, DSCHT,
pp. 249–50. Two versions of Dods’ book exist under the same title: a longer version prepared by
Dods himself and published in London in 1831; and an anonymous, posthumous shorter version
in which, according to its front matter, Dods’ original Edinburgh Christian Instructor reviews were
combined, edited, and published in Newburgh, New York by David L. Proudfit in 1842. All further
references will be to the London version.
60 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Dods finds Irving erring in theological reasoning and in claims of support

from scripture and patristic theologians.

2.1.1 Dods’s doctrinal logic

In the arena of theological reasoning, Dods claims that it is terminologically
inappropriate to take ‘sinful’ as synonymous with ‘peccable’4 or to speak of a
‘fallen human nature’. Regarding the latter, ‘human nature’ per se is immutably
good, having been created by God; to say otherwise is Manichaeism. Human
nature did not fall; if it had, then Adam would have lost his humanitas
when first he sinned. Rather, the Fall negatively impacted human nature’s
functionality. Christ assumed a human nature unchanged since Adam’s
creation but without its postlapsarian dysfunction: ‘In Christ the human
nature was not obstructed and perverted in its operations, by that law of the
flesh which dwells in fallen man.’ Furthermore, inasmuch as human nature
only exists as the nature of a particular person, to speak of a fallen nature in
abstraction from the particular person who bears it is absurd. If Christ’s flesh
is fallen, then either Christ himself is fallen or else his humanity is a distinct
person along Nestorian lines.5
Using the same logic, Dods excoriates Irving’s belief in Christ’s quiescent
Godhead. Just as belief in an unfallen person with a fallen nature is metaphysical
folly, so also is belief in a divine person without a divine nature’s attributes. A
limited deity is a self-contradiction, an entity akin to the Christ of Arius or the
Baal of Elijah’s taunts atop Mount Carmel. Christ’s miracles prove that, while
enduring infirmity, he was yet the Almighty.6
Turning to the munus triplex, Dods ties his rejection of Christ’s human
fallenness and divine quiescence to pastoral theology. Christ as prophet
perfectly reveals to Fall-fooled sinners God’s attributes, such as holiness,
justice, immutability, and love. Christ as priest perfectly satisfies the demands
of these attributes as confronted by humankind’s rebellion. Christ as king
possesses perfect authority over his own life, having ceded none to Satan
through personal sinfulness, and thus may voluntarily give his life and assume

4
M. Dods, On the Incarnation of the Eternal Word (London: R. B. Seeley & W. Burnside, 1831), p. viii.
5
Incarnation, ch. 7 (quotation from p. 372); Dods quotes Augustine, Fund. 33; Nat. bon. 3. Nantomah,
‘Jesus the God-Man’, pp. 223–4, cannot follow Dods’ philosophical argumentation.
6
Incarnation, pp. 151–3; 233, n. 1; 243–4; 319–20.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 61

it again for our salvation rather than being under any necessity of dying. A
sinful human nature in Christ would obscure his revelation, defile his atoning
sacrifice, and subject him to death’s and the devil’s mastery forever. An
ordinary infant, fallen in nature but as yet lacking any actual sins, would reveal
God or atone for sin just as well as such a Christ. The death of any common
sinner would display God’s moral character to just the same extent as a sin-
stained Jesus’ crucifixion would. His intercession would be neither more nor
less effectual than that which any fallen being may offer for another. Indeed,
if we are saved through the self-redemption of a sinful Saviour, why may we
sinful ones not do likewise and redeem ourselves? In short, all confidence in
the singular value of Christ as our Mediator is lost.7
Fundamental to Dods’s argument above is his belief that perfect holiness
requires that sinful impulses be absent, not merely suppressed. Any
propensity to sin is itself utterly sinful and renders its bearer guilty in nuce
of all wickedness, making perfect holiness impossible.8 Although Christ
took flesh from a fallen mother, the Holy Spirit generated him as holy so that
he inherited no sinful proclivities. Otherwise, what end would the Virgin
Birth serve?9
If, though, Christ never experienced inclinations towards sin, how can he
be a moral exemplar? Dods denies that the Incarnation was meant for this
purpose, although he traces back to Lactantius the contrary opinion. Dods
believes Lactantius’ logic undermines Christ’s deity and sinlessness: for Christ
to set a usable example, he must be exactly like us, with no advantages of
divinity or of freedom from either original or actual sin.10
Although for Dods, a fully divine and sinless Saviour cannot be a moral
model for strugglers with sin, still he can sympathize with them. Dods
appends to Part I of his book an anonymous preacher’s sermon on Heb. 4.15
to demonstrate this contention.11 According to the sermon, God himself both
tempts (Gen. 22.1) and is tempted (Ps. 95.9), but in neither case is it with

7
Incarnation, chs 1–4. Chapter 2 studies Christ’s prophetic office, ch. 3 his sacerdotal, and ch. 4 his
regal.
8
Incarnation, pp. 62–4, 135, 138.
9
Ibid., pp. 46–53.
10
Ibid., pp. 380–2; Dods quotes Lactantius, Divinarum institutionum 4.24.
11
Incarnation, pp. 390–413. D. Macleod, The Person of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998),
p. 285, n. 42, identifies the sermon’s author as, reputedly, James M’Lagan, to whom Dods dedicates
his volume (Incarnation, p. vi). Dods’ inclusion of this sermon effectively answers Nantomah, ‘Jesus
the God-Man’, p. 221, n. 2, who charges that the unfallenness view is unpreachable.
62 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

evil desires, only holy ones.12 Thus in demanding the sacrifice of Isaac, God
tempted Abraham’s rightful fatherly affection and righteous trust in God’s
promise of many descendants through Isaac. This biblical example shows that
temptation involving a holy desire is worse than temptation involving a sinful
desire. Jesus, then, being tempted solely by holy desires, has tasted temptation’s
worst and can sympathize with us however severe our temptations. Moreover,
his suffering from others’ sins sensitizes him to our feeling when suffering
from our own sins, and his bearing of imputed guilt initiates him into the
guilt-consciousness that burdens us. True, Christ had divine powers and
promises to sustain him, but these did not shelter him from a full sharing
in infirmity and temptation (e.g. in Gethsemane), and we too have God’s
Spirit and promises to uphold us amid our trials. Thus Christ is a sinless yet
sympathetic Mediator.

2.1.2 Dods’s scriptural support

In addition to Heb. 4.15, Dods appeals against Irving to multiple scriptures.
Among these are the Mosaic sacerdotal regulations, designed to make the high
priest as ceremonially holy as possible. These laws underscored the imperfect
holiness of even the Levitical high priests while foreshadowing Christ’s
sacrosanctity.13
Turning to Johannine assertions that the Word came in the flesh (Jn 1.14;
1 Jn 1.1; 5.20), Dods finds no kenotic diminution of the Word’s divinity;
rather, it is precisely in the flesh that the divine attributes manifest themselves.
Furthermore, John stresses the reality of that flesh, never its fallenness or
sinfulness.14 The Fourth Gospel also quotes Jesus’ assertion that Satan ‘hath
nothing in me’ (Jn 14.30 KJV). Dods hears this statement as implying the
absence in Christ of anything relating to sin or its derivative, death.15 Jesus’
invulnerability to involuntary death further appears in his claim that none can
take his life but that he has power to discard and retrieve it (Jn 10.17-18), as

12
The preacher claims that this is how Jas 1.13 must be interpreted, rather than in an absolute sense
(396–8).
13
Incarnation, pp. 134–5.
14
Ibid., pp. 312–21 (on Jn 1.14); 337–41 (on 1 John).
15
Ibid., pp. 222–3, 535–6 (on these latter pages citing Nyssen’s Hom. Eccles. 7 in support).
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 63

also in his authoritative behaviour at his arrest and on the Cross, culminating
in dismissing his spirit.16
Dods recognizes Rom. 8.3 as a crux interpretum. Long before Irving fastened
on it, the Gnostics used this verse to deny that Christ was truly incarnate,
since flesh is inherently sinful; he had only its similitude (‘likeness of … flesh’).
Tertullian replied that ‘likeness’ qualifies ‘sinful’, not ‘flesh’: Christ’s flesh was
real, but missing the sin that marks our flesh. Later, the Pelagians reversed the
Gnostic logic: Rom. 8.3 teaches the exact identity of Christ’s flesh with ours, and
therefore both his humanity and ours lack original sin. Augustine thundered
back that this passage envisages the sinfulness of all flesh save Christ’s. Irving,
then, combines a Pelagian construal of ‘likeness’ with a Gnostic construction
on ‘sinful flesh’. Dods himself affirms that Rom. 8.3 rules out both a complete
unlikeness and a complete identification between Christ and sinful flesh.17

2.1.3 Dods’s patristic support

Surveying the first four Christian centuries, Dods concludes that neither
the orthodox nor heretics ever claimed the sinfulness of Christ’s flesh – with
two exceptions, noted below. The heretics, however, were condemned for
dividing Christ’s person from his human nature in like manner to Irving, who
resurrects Gnosticism and Manichaeism and out-Nestorianizes Nestorius.18
The two exceptions to early Christians’ concord regarding the sinlessness of
Christ’s humanity were a book of unknown authorship, Pauli Praedicatio, and
a Donatist, Parmenianus. Both held that Christ received baptism to cleanse his
flesh from sin. Parmenianus’ Catholic opponent, Optatus, claimed rather that
Christ’s holiness sanctified the baptismal waters.19

16
Ibid., pp. 131–2, 154, 215–27 (citing Nyssen, On the Resurrection; Augustine, Tr. Ev. Jo. 47.6), 232,
527 (citing Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis, 13.13, 13.16).
17
Incarnation, pp. 322–3, quoting Tertullian’s Marc. 5.14 and Augustine’s C. Jul. 5.15 and C. Jul. op.
imp. 6.33 (which quotes Hilary of Poitiers in support of Augustine’s interpretation). Dods also cites
Hilary of Rome’s commentary on the Pauline epistles (525–6; hereafter in this section, all page
numbers in parentheses refer to Dods, Incarnation); Ambrose’s Paen. 1.3.12 (543); and Augustine’s
Ep. 164.19 (563–5).
18
Incarnation, pp. viii–xi, 234–6, 285–8, 316–17, 326, 420–45, 452–9 (citing Cyril of Alexandria’s
Twelve Chapters 4, 11), 569–70, 73.
19
Incarnation, pp. 522–5, citing Optatus’ treatise against Parmenianus and, for reference to Pauli
Praedicatio, an anonymous treatise inserted among Cyprian’s writings. Cyril of Jerusalem takes the
same view as Optatus (526–7, citing Catechesis 14.6). The view of Apostolic Constitutions 7.22 is
similar (469).
64 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Dods marshals an army of ancient testimonies against Irving’s tenets:

Christ’s divine attributes remained fully operational in the Incarnation;20 his
human traits are attributed to his person, not simply to his humanity;21 he
was born without the stain of sin introduced by the Fall;22 he was free from all
peccability, passions, and, on some accounts, even infirmities;23 his body was
under no necessity of death or corruption;24 in no sense did he save or atone
for himself.25 Some of the fathers even believed Jesus’ mother to be free from
fallenness – how much more her Son!26 Dods does not concur with the most
extreme patristic statements regarding Mariology or Christ’s lack of infirmity,
but cites them to show how far the early theologians were from attributing
sinfulness to Christ’s flesh. He especially commends the Christologies of
Irenaeus’ Adversus haereses, Tertullian’s De carne Christi, Ambrose’s De
incarnationis dominicae sacramento, and the works of Athanasius and
Augustine in general.27
Dods acknowledges no common ground with Irving’s view. To him it is a
congeries of heresies based on a poor grasp of reason, scripture, and tradition.
Our next subject, who, like Dods, denies fallenness to Christ’s humanity, will
display greater affinity than Dods does for aspects of Irving’s doctrine.

20
Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio evangelica 4.13 (513); Nyssen, Or. cat. 10 (536); Basil, Hom. 25
(527–30).
21
1 Clement 2.1 (467–8); Ignatius, Ephesians 1.1 (472–3); Ambrose, Spir. 3.11.76, 79; Incarn. 7.75 (540–
2). Dods’ point is that, if sinfulness is attributable to Christ’s humanity, then, contra Irving, it must
be attributed to his person, too.
22
In addition to the works of Augustine, Ambrose, Hilary of Rome, Optatus, and Cyril of Jerusalem
cited above: Augustine, Pecc. merit. 2.24; C. Jul. op. imp. 4.57 (47–50); Trin. 4.14 (139–40); Leo’s Tome
and Christmas sermons (460–2); Tertullian, Carn. Chr. 16 (492–3); Gregory Thaumaturgus’ creed
(503); Chrysostom, Sermon on the Nativity (546–7). Indeed, Irenaeus, Haer. 4.75-76; 5.16, affirms
that unfallen Adam’s humanity was but a reflection of Christ’s (484–6).
23
Gregory Nazianzen, Ors. 37, 42 (531–2), 51 (45–6); Justinian’s confession and anathemas (462–3);
Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 1.2; Stromata 4.9 (489–91); Hippolytus, Eranistes of Theodoret,
1, 3 (493–4); Origen, C. Celsum 1, 3 (495–8); Hilary of Poitiers, Trin. 10 (519–21); Macarius, Hom. 11
(520–2); Basil, Hom. 25; C. Eunom. 4 (527–31); Nyssen, Hom. Eccles. 7; Homily on the Resurrection 1
(535–9); Ambrose in Incarn. 7.75 allows that Christ’s human mind truly grew in wisdom, but in Fid.
5.18 claims that Christ only feigned ignorance (542–3).
24
In addition to Augustine’s, Nyssen’s, and Cyril of Jerusalem’s comments on John’s Gospel cited
above: Augustine, Trin. 4.16 (214); Anselm, Cur Deus Homo? 2.11 (247–8); Apostolic Constitutions
5.14 (469); Cyprian, De idolorum vanitate (498–9); Gregory Thaumaturgus’ ninth anathema (502);
Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio evangelica 3.4; 10 passim (513–14); Athanasius, De decretis 14;
C. Ar. 3; Inc. 32–33; 21–24, 44 (515–18); Nazianzen, Or. 38 (532); Amphilocius, Dogmatic Epistle to
Pancharius (540); Basil of Seleucia, Hom. 32 (561–2).
25
Gregory Thaumaturgus’ seventh anathema; the Council of Ephesus’ tenth anathema (502).
26
Methodius of Tyre’s discourse on the Presentation (504); Amphilocius, Sermon on the Mother of God
(540); Chrysostom, Sermon on the Annunciation (546–7).
27
Incarnation, pp. 333 (Augustine), 487 (Irenaeus), 492 (Tertullian), 515 (Athanasius), 542, n. 2
(Ambrose).
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 65

2.2 Descent and development: A. B. Bruce

In the same year in which Dods published his Incarnation of the Eternal Word,
Alexander Balmain Bruce (1831–99) was born. Raised in the Free Kirk, Bruce
served as one of its ministers and, from 1875 until his death, as a professor of
New Testament exegesis and apologetics at Free Church College in Glasgow.
His most enduring contribution to Christology was The Humiliation of
Christ, originally delivered as the 1874 Cunningham Lectures28 and thereafter
published.29 It is this work that will chiefly occupy our attention, although
passages from others of Bruce’s writings will be adduced where relevant.30

2.2.1 Bruce’s agenda and axioms

Delivered as a flurry of kenotic Christological theorizing was blowing
towards Britain from Germany,31 Bruce’s Humiliation of Christ proposes to
examine the doctrine of Christ from a professedly novel perspective: that of
his humiliation.32 Bruce considers in turn Christ’s ‘physical’ (i.e. ontological)
humiliation in assuming a human nature, his ethical humiliation in undergoing
temptation and moral development, and his ‘official’ humiliation in carrying
out the office of Saviour.33 Throughout, Bruce presents his constructive biblical

28
Incorrectly dated by two otherwise helpful sources as the 1876 Cunningham Lectures in T. R.
Thompson, ‘Nineteenth-Century Kenotic Christology: The Waxing, Waning, and Weighing of
a Quest for a Coherent Orthodoxy’, in Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God
(ed. C. S. Evans; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 74–111 (86, n. 16), and as the 1879
Cunningham Lectures in R. R. Redman Jr., Reformulating Reformed Theology: Jesus Christ in the
Theology of Hugh Ross Mackintosh (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997), p. 124. The
first edition of The Humiliation of Christ was published in 1876, two years after Bruce gave his
Cunningham Lectures.
29
Biographical data on Bruce may be found in the following sources: ‘1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/
Bruce, Alexander Balmain’, Wikisource, The Free Library; n.d.; n.p. Cited 28 September 2011.
Online://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Bruce,_
Alexander_Balmain& oldid=662873; ‘Bruce, Alexander Balmain’, in ODCC (2005), n.p. Cited 28
September 2011. Online: http://www.oxford-christianchurch.com/entry?entry=t257.e1019.
30
The following works of Bruce will be examined in this section: The Humiliation of Christ in its
Physical, Ethical, and Official Aspects (New York: A. C. Armstrong & Son, 2nd edn, 1889; repr., n.p.:
Forgotten Books AG, 2010); Apologetics; or, Christianity Defensively Stated (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
2nd edn, 1893); St. Paul’s Conception of Christianity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1894); and The Epistle
to the Hebrews: The First Apology for Christianity. An Exegetical Study (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1899).
31
Thompson, ‘Nineteenth-Century Kenotic Christology’, pp. 74–86; Redman, Reformulating,
pp. 124–5, notes how influential Bruce’s Humiliation was in both introducing Britons to kenoticism
and cautioning against its more radical formulations.
32
Humiliation, pp. 1–3.
33
Bruce devotes four lectures to the ontology of Christ’s humiliation, while assigning one lecture each
to its ethical and soteriological aspects.
66 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

and theological interpretations in dialogue with theologians ranging from the

church fathers to such modern divines as Irving and Dods.
Bruce begins his exposition by drawing from the Christ-hymn of
Philippians 2 and from the epistle to the Hebrews a series of axioms regarding
Christ’s humiliation. Philippians presents a pre-existent person who voluntarily
replaces a status of divine majesty with a status of human finitude and
servitude, yet retains the same personhood, self-consciousness (the ‘mind of
Christ’), and divine essence as before the Incarnation.34 Hebrews adds that the
Saviour must be as fully one with humanity – both in nature and in experience
of temptation, accursedness, and death – as if he were merely human, personal
sinfulness only but absolutely excepted. It is in this utmost identification with
human lowliness that Christ is exalted.35

2.2.2 Christ’s humiliation in historical theology

In applying these axioms to the ancient church’s Christological disputes, Bruce
first evaluates Apollinarianism. Apollinaris denied to Christ a human mind
for the sake of three desiderata: the unity of Christ’s personhood under the
direction of a single, divine mind; the virtue of Christ’s sufferings inasmuch
as they afflicted his divine soul, not an ordinary human soul in him; and the
pledge of his moral infallibility due to the substitution of the impeccable Logos
for a human rationality and volition that, in Apollinaris’ opinion, not only
may but must lead their possessor into sin. Bruce protests along moralistic
lines: such a view rules out the sanctification of our own human souls save
‘by the mutilation of [our] nature, or by a magical overbearing of [our] nature
by divine power’.36 Furthermore, while Apollinaris asserts divine passibility
(a doctrine with which Bruce is sympathetic),37 God-in-Christ’s experience of
suffering is truncated:

34
Humiliation, pp. 22–3.
35
Ibid., pp. 26–36. Heb. 2.10, 11, 14-18; 4.15; and 5.7 are, for Bruce, key passages on the question of
Christ’s humanity both here and in Hebrews, pp. 101–2, 114, 118, 124–6, 171, n. 1, 181–9.
36
Humiliation, p. 45. Bruce repeatedly contrasts two types of power: the moral and the metaphysical
(‘magical’ or ‘physical’ in his terminology). True religion operates by the former, while superstitious
evils like sacramentalism and sacerdotalism vainly rely upon the latter. See pp. 271–2, 437;
Apologetics, p. 409; Conception, pp. 285–92; Hebrews, p. 438.
37
In Humiliation, pp. 123–4, Bruce appeals to the Bible’s theopathetic language and again applies his
moral concern to doctrine: though God and humanity may be dissimilar metaphysically, they are
similar morally; therefore God is capable of moral anguish – indeed, he is capable of infinite moral
anguish due to his metaphysical status.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 67

Place is found for the physical fact of death, but no place is found for the
moral suffering connected with temptation. Christ is so carefully guarded
from sin, that He is not even allowed to know what it is to be tempted to
sin. The author of the theory … solves the problem of Christ’s sinlessness by
annihilating the conditions under which the problem has to be worked out.
There is no human nous, no freedom, no struggle. …38

The fathers’ own record is only relatively better. Hilary of Poitiers equates all
infirmity with sin and so excludes Christ from even bodily weaknesses.39 Cyril
of Alexandria grants him frailty of flesh but not of mind: Jesus only appeared to
grow in wisdom or to lack knowledge of the Parousia.40 Leo and the Definition
of Chalcedon fail to discuss whether Christ possessed human personality or
infirmities such as ignorance, and if so, how these related to his divinity. The
indefiniteness of Chalcedon on such issues brought on ‘the dreary period of
Christology’ in which metaphysical debates produced ‘an anatomical figure in
place of the Christ of the Gospel history’.41
By contrast with Apollinarianism, the fathers promoted the doctrine of
‘redemption by sample’42: Christ takes a human nature complete in both body
and soul in order to renew it. Gregory Nazianzen’s non-assumptus dictum
must be understood in this light. Bruce gives Cyril of Alexandria’s explanation
of the matter:

Christ must take flesh that He might deliver us from death; and He must take
a human soul to deliver us from sin, destroying sin in humanity by living a
human life free from all sin, – rendering the soul He assumed superior to sin
by dyeing it, and tinging it with the moral firmness and immutability of His
own divine nature.43

Cyril affirms that Christ bore humanity’s every limitation save sin alone.44
Likewise, Gregory Nyssen combats Apollinaris’ claim that a human mind

38
Ibid., p. 46.
39
Ibid., pp. 238–43, citing Trin. 10.23, 25, 35, 44, 47.
40
Ibid., pp. 55–7, 368–74, citing Adv. anthropomorphitas 14; C. Orientales, Anathema 4; Quod unus sit
Christus (PG 75, p. 1332); Adv. Nestorium (PG 76, p. 154); Ad reginas de recti fide oratio altera 16;
Thesaurus, Assertiones 22, 28; C. Theodoretum, Anathema 4.
41
Ibid., pp. 65–8 (quotations from the lattermost page; italics original).
42
Ibid., p. 254, n. 2 (all capitals in the original).
43
Ibid., p. 47. The quotation is from Inc. unigen. 8. On the same page, Bruce also quotes Athanasius, De
salvatori adventu Jesu Christi (= C. Apoll. 2), ‘about the middle’.
44
Ibid., p. 55, quoting Adv. anthropomorphitas 14 (Cyril makes this exception twice in the passage
quoted).
68 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

in Christ would necessarily involve him in sinfulness, asserting instead that

‘mind is not sin’.45 In contradistinction from a later version of the doctrine of
redemption by sample, the fathers never taught that ‘Christ took a portion of
sinful humanity and made it holy, and through it sanctified the whole lump;
but only that He took a portion of humanity in a sinless state, and kept it
sinless through a life of temptation, and presented it to His Father as the first-
fruits of a renewed humanity’.46
That later version of the doctrine arose first among the eighth-century
Spanish Adoptionists and again in Bruce’s own day through Edward Irving’s
preaching. Bruce sees their view as rendering superfluous both the Virgin Birth
(since it claims that Christ inherited original sin just as Adam’s natural offspring
do)47 and the Cross (for how does the killing of Christ’s merely latently sinful
flesh either satisfy God’s justice or help us in our struggles with the flesh?).48
In addition, Irving, in particular, equates all mortality, corruptibility, liability
to temptation and disease, and all other infirmities with fallenness. Bruce
contends instead that an unfallen being like Christ may be capable of dying
without coming under the necessity of dying, may be truly tempted without
suffering concupiscence, and may bear infirmities without their being sinful.49

2.2.3 Christ’s unfallen mortality, temptations, and infirmities

Bruce moderates Dods’s claim that special divine action was necessary in
order for Christ to die. Like unfallen Adam, his body was naturally liable to
death by such means as deprivation of food, accidental or premeditated injury,
or disease. Adam’s failure left him no escape from this mortal condition, thus

45
Ibid., 45, claiming to quote Antirrh. adv. Apol. 5 (this line actually appears in Antirrh. adv. Apol. 11.)
46
Ibid., p. 254, n. 2 (italics original); cf. 311–12.
47
Bruce remarks,
Irving speaks of the manner of Christ’s conception as having the effect of taking away original
sin. But this is simply a quibble; for he explains his meaning by remarking that Christ was not
a human person, never had personal subsistence as a mere man. Beyond a doubt the theory
requires that original sin should be ascribed to Christ; for original sin is a vice of fallen human
nature. (255; italics original)
48
Ibid., p. 437. Bruce critiques two methods of applying to believers Christ’s self-mortification: the
wishful thinking of ‘faith-mysticism’ and the ‘sacramental magic’ of the transubstantiation of our
bodies by Christ’s resurrection body in the Eucharist (italics original).
49
Ibid., pp. 238–43, 255–8. Bruce notes that Irving concurs with Hilary of Poitiers in seeing all
infirmities as marks of sin, but whereas Hilary denied to Christ both infirmity and sin (Trin. 10.23,
25, 35, 44, 47), Irving assigns both to Christ.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 69

condemning him to die; Jesus, by contrast, freely chose not to evade his foes’
plots and the natural processes of death.50
Bruce seconds Dods, though, regarding Christ’s temptations: his impeccability
assures the outcome without annulling real moral struggle, and temptations due
to sinless infirmities may equal or outpace those from sinful inclinations. Thus
Abraham was tempted to slay his son out of holy love for God. Thus Jesus was
tempted to seek a worldly kingdom, not from pride but from desire to avoid the
pain involved with his Father’s will.51
According to Bruce’s reading of Hebrews (2.10; 5.7-9; 7.28; 12.2),52 Christ’s
conflicts with temptation formed an essential part of the real moral development
which he underwent in his humanity while remaining sinless. Opposing Cyril’s
claim that anything short of perfection implies sin, Bruce distinguishes moral
integrity from moral perfection. Adam before the Fall had the first but not the
second, else he would never have fallen. A child, too, may attain the former
while lacking the latter53 – and the juvenile Jesus was such a child par excellence.
How are Christ’s human infirmities and development to be reconciled
with his divine powers and perfections? Bruce surveys the traditional extra
Calvinisticum doctrine and the modern kenotic theories,54 finds them all
problematic, and resolves to hold to the biblical evidence for both the undiluted
deity and the thoroughgoing humanity of Christ apart from a comprehensive
explanation.55 Bruce does, though, explain how omnipotence is made available
to Christ’s tempted humanity without overwhelming its infirmities. Drawing
upon the sixteenth-century Reformed theologian Ursinus, Bruce proposes
that the Logos channels wisdom and virtue to his humanity not directly or of
metaphysical necessity, but morally (i.e. voluntarily) through the Spirit who
proceeds from him. This mediated omnipotence is itself not metaphysical
power to defeat temptation but rather moral power to do so.56

50
Humiliation, pp. 260–1. On the latter page, Bruce comments that Dods’ claim that Christ could
choose to die by his divine power (Incarnation, pp. 99, 165) is misunderstood if interpreted to mean
that Christ had to perform a miracle in order to die.
51
Humiliation, pp. 265–70. On p. 270, n. 2, Bruce commends the sermon appended to Dods’
Incarnation, part I.
52
Bruce sees Heb. 12.2 as describing Jesus as perfecting his own faith (Humiliation, p. 274).
53
Ibid., pp. 274–88.
54
Ibid., pp. 126–9, 134–92. Bruce titles the extra Calvinisticum the ‘double life’ view: the Logos lives a
life of cosmic governance concurrently with his earthly life in Jesus of Nazareth.
55
Ibid., pp. 58, 171, 191–2.
56
Ibid, pp. 124–6, 271–2. Note the underlying assumption of the filioque in this model.
70 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Having been perfected through temptation, Christ offers himself to his

Father on Calvary as both a sample of and a substitute for humanity. As a
sample, he is the Holy One who dies to maintain the absolute absence of sin
from his life – not to attain it, as in Irving’s view – through obedience even
unto death. As a substitute, he is ‘made sin for us’ in the sense of bearing the
punishment for our transgressions by his bodily death.57

2.2.4 Bruce’s evolving explanation of flesh and sin

Bruce is aware that a pillar of the theory of redemption by sinful sample is
the New Testament’s (and particularly Paul’s) negative use of the term sarx,
especially in Rom. 8.3, in which God’s Son is said to be en homoiōmati sarkos
hamartias. Bruce notes that this phrase raises two exegetical questions:
Does homoiōma here emphasize similarity or dissimilarity between the Son
and sinful flesh? Does hamartias bespeak an essential, hence inseparable,
attribute of sarx or an accidental, separable attribute? He allows that various
combinations of answers are exegetically permissible and, in Humiliation,
offers no personal interpretation beyond denying that Paul held a Manichaean
view of the flesh.58
In his later writings, Bruce clarifies his views. Pauline sarx is basically
synonymous with sōma. It refers to the material half of the human constitution,
the remaining half being the human spirit, mind, or soul. Paul sees sarx as the
‘seat of sin’ not because of a metaphysical philosophy that flesh is inherently
evil, but because of the moral experience that it is the source of desires –
especially libido – that distract from religious devotion and tempt towards
sin.59 Yet exegeting Rom. 8.3, Bruce comments, ‘Properly speaking, what the
apostle calls “flesh of sin” is not sinful. Sin and sinlessness belong to the person

57
Ibid., pp. 309–21. Bruce sees redemption by sample taught in 2 Cor. 5.14 and redemption by penal
substitution in 2 Cor. 5.21 (317–18). Regarding the latter doctrine, he approves of Calvin’s view that
Christ suffered only the effects of God’s wrath; the Father was never displeased with the Son (337,
341). Furthermore, Christ never suffered the torments of the damned; rather, the infliction of God’s
wrath upon a perfectly holy, divine person was sufficient to counterbalance the sin-debt of the whole
world (341–51).
58
Ibid., pp. 431–6.
59
Conception, pp. 140, 144–5, 262–78. Cf. Jesus’ own view, according to Bruce, in Apologetics,
pp. 57–60.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 71

and not to the nature. The flesh as such is in no case bad. It is the inversion of
the right relationship between flesh and spirit that is sin.’60
Bruce notes that orthodox tradition views Rom. 8.3 as teaching the
unlikeness of Christ’s flesh to ours, but sides with modern scholars who reverse
that judgement. For Christ to share our ‘sinful flesh’ means that his humanity
is enough like ours that he can be tempted through physical appetites. Yet
Christ lived victoriously within our common flesh by the Spirit’s power, setting
Christians an example. That power is moral, not metaphysical: for the Spirit to
produce flesh metaphysically different than ours would not ensure sinlessness,
which is a moral quality resulting from the Spirit’s influence on Christ’s will,
not on his body.61 Thus the biological fact of the Virgin Birth signifies rather
than effects Jesus’ sinlessness.62
Bruce denies traditional understandings of total depravity and original
righteousness. Romans 7’s first-person confession, which describes humanity
as a whole, distinguishes sin in the flesh from God’s law in the mind because
humanity is not generally totally depraved, but possesses a feeble goodness
of soul.63 The Gospels’ Jesus thinks likewise, sympathizing with the masses
whose ‘moral nature [was] not so much depraved as undeveloped’ and who,
being guilty only of fleshly sins, needed but ‘to rouse the man against the brute’.
Christ reserves his ire for the Pharisees, whose very spirits were perverse.64
This depiction of the Galilean crowds anticipates Bruce’s description of
Adam in light of the then-new Darwinian theory. Evolution resulted in ‘a
being who was not merely an animal, but in rudimentary form human’. This
development marked the ‘possibility of moral life’ – but only the possibility.
The first man possessed original innocence but not original righteousness in
the sense of moral perfection. He was morally childlike and full of animal
impulses through which evil might master him if he did not learn to master
them. This new creature had the potential to move downwards as well as
upwards towards moral perfection. The Fall was a fall back towards the inferior
bestial state whence he had come, a refusal to advance morally.65 This course

60
Conception, p. 285.
61
Ibid., pp. 172–4, 279–92, 332; cf. Apologetics, pp. 400–10.
62
Apologetics, p. 409.
63
Conception, pp. 139, 144–5.
64
Apologetics, pp. 57–8 (quotations from p. 57).
65
Apologetics, pp. 62–3; cf. Conception, pp. 42, 274.
72 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

of moral advancement, Hebrews indicates, Christ has passed through sinlessly

despite sharing our nature, in order to sanctify us.66
Bruce’s mature hamartiological discussions allow Jesus to share with fallen
humankind the same ‘sinful flesh’ (i.e. a physical nature with natural appetites
vulnerable to sin’s allurements) and to overcome by the Spirit – themes dear
to fallenness advocates like Irving and Gunton. Yet Bruce’s Christ had a
sinless, unfallen humanity during his earthly life, for inclinations towards evil
characterized prelapsarian human nature and are not in themselves sin, and
Christ always disciplined his flesh so as never to exist in the state of moral
retardation which constitutes fallenness. In his later writings, Bruce rebukes
Irving’s doctrine as forcefully as at first.67 Yet Irving’s fortunes would soon
improve, thanks to the theologian to be considered next.

2.3 Catalyst for fallenness: H. R. Mackintosh

Edinburgh’s New College theologian Hugh Ross Mackintosh (1870–1936)68

represents the hub at which meet all the figures studied thus far. One of his
professors had been the elder Marcus Dods’s homonymous son,69 to whose
memory Mackintosh dedicated his first important work, The Doctrine of the
Person of Jesus Christ. In that book, Mackintosh uses A. B. Bruce’s writings and
perpetuates their interest in kenoticism and rejection of Irving’s fallenness view.
Mackintosh became a strong voice in anglophone Reformed theology during
his lifetime, exercising great influence as a teacher and writer.70 One significant
aspect of that influence involved exposing English speakers to trendsetters
in German-language theology such as the early Karl Barth, for whose work
Mackintosh expressed critical appreciation, culminating in his posthumously

66
Hebrews, pp. 101–2, 114, 118, 124–6, 171, n. 1.
67
Apologetics, p. 61; Conception, pp. 286–92; Hebrews, p. 118.
68
Biographical information taken from ‘Mackintosh, Hugh Ross’, ODCC (2005), n.p. Cited 28
September 2011. Online: http://www.oxford-christianchurch.com/entry?entry=t257.e4242.
69
Redman, Reformulating, p. 11.
70
‘Mackintosh, Hugh Ross’; Redman, Reformulating, pp. 1, 7. These sources identify Mackintosh’s
three major works as The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ (1912); The Christian Experience of
Forgiveness (1927); and Types of Modern Theology (1937). For a recollection of Mackintosh’s impact
on his students, see T. F. Torrance, ‘Appreciation: Hugh Ross Mackintosh Theologian of the Cross’,
in H. R. Mackintosh, The Person of Jesus Christ (ed. T. F. Torrance; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, new edn,
2000), pp. 71–94 (75). This book is a distillation of the Christology of Doctrine of the Person of Jesus
Christ and should not be confused with the larger work.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 73

published Types of Modern Theology.71 He directed his students, including T. F.

Torrance, to Barth’s CD I/1.72 In the second half-volume of the Dogmatics,
though, Barth himself displays Mackintosh’s influence: Barth quotes Irving’s
precedent for his own view that Christ assumed fallen flesh, yet the quotations
come not directly from Irving but from Mackintosh’s quotations of him
while critiquing him in Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ.73 As narrated in
Chapter 1, Barth’s solitary reference to Irving rehabilitates him, bringing him
to the attention of Colin Gunton and, through Gunton, to Thomas Weinandy.
Ironically, Mackintosh’s rejection of Irving leads to Irving’s acceptance. In this
light, and in light of Mackintosh’s promotion of Barth to Torrance and others,
one must give Mackintosh his due for the anglophone world’s interest in the
fallenness view.
Did Mackintosh himself hold that view? Torrance affirms so, crediting
his mentor74 with first introducing him to it prior to Torrance’s reading of
Barth.75 As evidence, Torrance points to Mackintosh’s frequent appeal to the
patristic non-assumptus;76 his version of kenoticism, according to which Christ
condescended to ‘our estranged condition under the condemnation of his
eternal truth and righteousness’; and his doctrine of the Atonement.77 We will
test Torrance’s claim against the two major works which he references: Doctrine
of the Person of Jesus Christ and The Christian Experience of Forgiveness.78

2.3.1 The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ

Mackintosh intended Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ as a students’
textbook in Christology.79 The book comprises a section on the doctrine’s New

71
‘Mackintosh, Hugh Ross’; Reformulating, pp. xiii, 16, 21–2; Morgan, Barth Reception, pp. 26–9, 34–5,
48–9, 160–1.
72
Torrance, ‘Appreciation’, p. 73.
73
CD I/2, p. 154, citing Mackintosh, Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, p. 277. On Mackintosh’s
correspondence with Barth and their single personal meeting, see Redman, Reformulating, pp. 21–2.
74
For Mackintosh’s influence on Torrance, see McGrath, T. F. Torrance, pp. 51–3, 163–4; R. Redman,
‘Mackintosh, Torrance and Reformulation of Reformed Theology in Scotland’, Participatio 2 (2010),
pp. 64–76. Cited 9 December 2011. Online: www.tftorrance. org/journal/participatio_vol_2_2010.pdf.
75
Torrance, Atonement, p. 441. Cf. Karl Barth, p. 232.
76
Torrance, ‘Appreciation’, p. 86; Atonement, p. 441.
77
Torrance, ‘Appreciation’, pp. 80–1, 86 (quotation from p. 81; the words are Torrance’s, not
Mackintosh’s).
78
Ibid., p. 75. In his foreword to The Person of Jesus Christ, pp. vii–ix, Torrance praises Doctrine of the
Person of Jesus Christ as ‘one of the really great works in Christian Dogmatics’ (vii).
79
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, p. vii.
74 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Testament sources, one on its historical development, and a final section on

Mackintosh’s own kenotic reconstruction of it. He uses Bruce’s writings when
covering the synoptic Gospels, Hebrews, German kenoticism, and Irving.80
Within the New Testament, Mackintosh underscores the Gospels’ and
Hebrews’ depictions of Christ’s genuine human development, limited
knowledge, dependence upon his Father for guidance and miraculous power,
and real battles with temptation – yet without any taint of even inward sin, for
‘no corrupt stain existed in His nature to which temptation could appeal’.81 As
for the Pauline ascription to Christ of ‘the likeness of sinful flesh’, Mackintosh
explains that ‘the meaning is simply that while Christ’s flesh is as real as ours,
and as human, it was not like ours sinful. The flesh of man, with this one
exception, was the pattern of His flesh, but in Him alone it may be seen in a
perfected relation to the Spirit.’82
In keeping with his kenotic concern, Mackintosh’s historical survey focuses
on the church’s overall tendency, prior to the nineteenth century, to obscure
the robust humanity in the New Testament’s portrait of Jesus of Nazareth.
The issue of Christ’s relationship to sinful humankind arises occasionally.83
Irenaeus receives applause for holding together Christ’s person and work
through a soteriology of ‘personal identification’: ‘In His infinite love He was
made as we are in order that He might make us to be as He is. Our fleshly and
corruptible nature is, as it were, fused or inoculated with Deity, and so made
immortal.’84 Similarly, Gregory Nazianzen rightly insisted against Apollinaris
that in order to make humanity whole, Christ must take a whole humanity –
hence ‘the unassumed is the unhealed’.85
The above could appear to support Torrance’s claim that Mackintosh
taught the fallenness view. What, though, does Mackintosh mean by salvific
‘personal identification’? And how does he understand Nazianzen’s dictum? In
his coverage of the Synoptics, Mackintosh had commented that Jesus’ baptism

80
Synoptics: A. B. Bruce, The Kingdom of God (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2nd edn, 1890); Hebrews:
Hebrews; kenoticism and Irving: Humiliation.
81
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, pp. 11–14, 26, 35–8, 79–80, 100–2, 104–7 (quotation from p. 79).
82
Ibid., p. 63.
83
Mackintosh discusses the Spanish Adoptionists (225) but never mentions their teaching that Christ
had sinful flesh or makes use of Bruce’s analysis of them.
84
Ibid., pp. 145–6 (quotations from 146). Mackintosh generally cites secondary rather than primary
sources for his historical survey. Nevertheless, the second quotation above begins with a line from
Irenaeus’ Haer. 5.praef.
85
Ibid., p. 200 (quoting Nazianzen, Ep. 101).
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 75

was not a confession of sin but a self-identification with sinners ‘in which He
numbered Himself with the transgressors and took all their burdens as His
own’.86 Later, Mackintosh writes of the Atonement as ‘Jesus’ self-identification
with the sinful’ and quotes Nazianzen’s dictum again – just after a passage
on the necessity of Christ’s thorough sinlessness to his perfect humanity!87
For Mackintosh, then, ‘personal identification’ and the non-assumptus mean
that God’s Son becomes really human and sympathetically reckons himself
sinful. Mackintosh will develop the latter theme in The Christian Experience
of Forgiveness.
Turning to the modern period, Mackintosh critiques two opposing thinkers
on the subject of Christ’s relation to sin. Schleiermacher’s insistence on Christ’s
sinlessness verges on Docetism, for Schleiermacher excludes moral struggle
from Christ’s life.88 Irving veers to the other extreme, associating Christ’s
moral struggle and physical corruptibility with moral corruption. The result is
a diluted doctrine of Christ’s sinlessness, for he possesses a ‘strong efficacious
germ of evil’, which the terms ‘original sin’ and ‘fallen human nature’ commonly
connote.89 As we saw in Chapter 1.3.1, young Torrance is influenced by this
critique to reject Irving. In claiming Mackintosh for the fallenness view,
though, Torrance overlooks Mackintosh’s equation of fallenness with original
sin in this passage. For Mackintosh, to attribute fallenness to Christ would be
to attribute original sin to him.
The full significance of Christ’s full sinlessness appears in Mackintosh’s
reconstruction of Christology. He rejects, on the one hand, the merely human
‘good teacher’ of liberalism and, on the other, the two-natured Christ of
Chalcedon. Both traditions are blind to the fact that self-conscious, ethical
Will is the ultimate metaphysical category. Liberals grant Jesus’ union of will
with God but miss the implication: Jesus therefore is God. Chalcedonian

86
Ibid., pp. 36–7 (quotation from latter page).
87
Ibid., pp. 404–5 (quotation from latter page). It is p. 404’s quotation of Nazianzen which Torrance
cites in a handwritten note in his Auburn lectures – the first of Torrance’s many appeals to the
dictum (Rankin, ‘Carnal Union’, pp. 107–8).
88
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, p. 255; repeated in Types of Modern Theology, pp. 88–90 (see
2.3.3 below).
89
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, pp. 276–8 (quotation from lattermost page). Mackintosh
suggests that Irving may have been confused by the Fathers’ tendency to make ‘flesh’ synonymous
with ‘humanity’, and so misconstrued their meaning of ‘corrupt’. In Reformulating, Redman
misinterprets Mackintosh’s term ‘corruptible’ as meaning ‘open to the possibility of sin’ (97–8). In
fact, Mackintosh immediately defines the term himself: ‘liable to corruption or decay … liable to
decay and death, as being capable of dying’ (278).
76 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

and post-Chalcedonian orthodoxy postulates substance as greater than will,

thereby dividing Christ’s unity of life between two autonomously existent,
amoral, quasi-material entities called ‘divine nature’ and ‘human nature’, each
with its own will. For Mackintosh, by contrast, in Christ divinity and humanity
are ‘two aspects of a single concrete life’.90 Since no human nature exists apart
from a personal will, and since there is only one divine-human, sinless will in
Christ, an Irving-like formula such as ‘sinful in humanity but not in divinity’
or ‘sinful in nature but sinless in person’ becomes impossible.
Sinlessness is, as previously mentioned, crucial for Christ’s perfect humanity.
Mackintosh critiques traditional orthodoxy for doing injustice to Christ’s full
humanity. Yet against those who claim that Christ cannot be one with us in
nature or sympathy without himself having a sinful humanity, Mackintosh
argues the reverse. Sin diminishes one’s humanity; therefore a sinless Christ
is the most fully human Christ. Indeed, any sin within Christ would dull his
experience of temptation and his sympathy. Beset by sinless infirmities and
temptations, he has known the fullest extent of agony in choosing God’s path
over natural human desires, and his hard-won victories attract us to him for
aid with our struggles.91
Not only is sinlessness evidence of Christ’s perfect humanity, but also of
his deity, which enables his human moral perfection.92 His sinlessness is a
miracle, of which the absence of a human father in his conception is a sign but
not a source: Christ could have inherited already-sinful proclivities through
Mary93 or been conditioned towards sin by his environment, but instead, he
developed from infancy to adulthood ‘with a nature untainted, immaculate,
nowise handicapped from the very outset by seeds of evil germinating in the
soil of character’. Indeed, ‘From outset to end no desire, motion, conception, or
resolve existed in the soul of Jesus which was not the affirmation and execution

90
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, pp. 213–15, 288–303 (quotation from 295; italics original),
415–18; cf. 113–14. On Mackintosh’s concrete Christocentric theological method and abhorrence
of abstractions, see A. Purves, Exploring Christology and Atonement: Conversations with John
McLeod Campbell, H. R. Mackintosh and T. F. Torrance (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2015), pp.
87–90.
91
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, pp. 386–7, 393–5, 401–6; on p. 404, in the midst of this
argument, Mackintosh quotes the non-assumptus.
92
Ibid., pp. 403–4, 412. Mackintosh holds that Jesus knew he was impeccable but ‘not in advance how
or how soon the final triumph [over each temptation] would be vouchsafed’ (481; cf. 412–13).
93
Ibid., pp. 532–3.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 77

of the will of God.’94 As we have seen, this unbroken continuity of will between
Christ and God constitutes the deity of Christ for Mackintosh.95
The importance of sinlessness as evidence for Christ’s deity is heightened
by Mackintosh’s kenoticism. In the Incarnation, the Son transposes his
attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence from actuality
into potentiality, rendering them incompletely usable until his resurrection.96
Accordingly, we may not point to these attributes in the earthly Christ’s life as
evidence of his divinity. Rather, our appeal must be to such attributes as his
sinlessness, which reveals divine holiness; his forgiveness, which demonstrates
divine pardon; and his self-sacrifice, which manifests divine love.97 To these
three attributes Mackintosh will return in his second major work.

2.3.2 The Christian Experience of Forgiveness

Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ examined the Incarnation. Fifteen years
later, Mackintosh published The Christian Experience of Forgiveness, which
emphasized the Atonement. Here Mackintosh repeats that Christ reveals divine
love and forgiveness, especially on the Cross, and in doing so reveals his own
deity.98 Christ also reveals the true character of sin: it is unchristlikeness, the
contradiction in heart or act to his trusting love of God.99 Given this definition
of sin and Mackintosh’s stress on human congenital evil,100 the implication is
that Christ’s humanity is, in very nature, the antithesis of our depravity.
This contrast between our sinfulness and Christ’s sinlessness is transcended
by Christ’s reconciling movement. Developing the concept of personal

94
Ibid., pp. 413–14.
95
R. R. Redman Jr., ‘H. R. Mackintosh’s Contribution to Christology and Soteriology in the Twentieth
Century’, SJT 41.4 (1988), pp. 517–34 (520), quotes Mackintosh’s Lecture Synopses (unpublished and
undated summaries of his class lectures), sheet 50, which asserts that the ethical relationship between
Jesus and God, far from diminishing Christ’s divinity, is the profoundest metaphysical reality.
96
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, pp. 465–86; cf. 106–7. For historical context and theological
analysis, see Thompson, ‘Nineteenth-Century Kenotic Christology’, pp. 87–95; cf. Purves, Exploring,
pp. 92–5. The kenoticism of Reformed theologians like Irving and Mackintosh belies the claim by
Allen, The Christ’s Faith, p. 126, that kenoticism is a peculiarly Lutheran interest.
97
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, pp. 13–14, 326–43, 397, 401, 412, 466–7, 486. Redman,
‘Contribution’, p. 525, notes that Mackintosh’s later lectures and writings do not explicitly discuss
kenoticism.
98
H. R. Mackintosh, The Christian Experience of Forgiveness (New York: Harper & Bros., 1927), pp.
83–102, 210–12.
99
Ibid., pp. 54–5, 61.
100
Ibid., pp. 41, 53–4, 63–9, 234. Mackintosh denies total depravity as overstating the case, but affirms
Kant’s concept of radical evil.
78 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

identification first articulated in Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ,

Mackintosh analyses the Atonement via the analogy of human forgiveness.
For forgiveness to occur, the forgiver must sympathize with the offender
and bear the cost of forgiving. God in Christ sympathizes with sinners by
self-identifying with them and bears the cost of forgiving them. This self-
identification increases throughout Christ’s lifetime and culminates on the
Cross in his acceptance on our behalf of God’s judgement upon sin.101 As in
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, Mackintosh has in mind that Christ took
on sinners’ responsibility, not their warped nature.102 Yet their very nature is
changed through their mystical union with him.103
Thus far, Torrance’s claim that his Edinburgh teacher schooled him in the
fallenness view stands unsubstantiated.104 Whether quoting Nazianzen’s non-
assumptus, advocating kenoticism, or explicating Christ’s atoning identification
with sinners, Mackintosh never speaks of the Incarnation as including a fallen
or sinful humanity.105 Indeed, he specifically critiques Irving for doing so. One
possibility remains: perhaps reading Barth changed Mackintosh’s mind.

2.3.3 Types of Modern Theology

To test this hypothesis, we examine the coverage of the Swiss theologian in
the Scot’s last major work. What we find is, first, that although Mackintosh

101
Ibid., pp. 188–93, 198, 207–8, 215–19, 224–9. Purves, Exploring, p. 177, frets that Mackintosh
overloads the analogy between human and divine forgiving, which assumes a ‘shared moral order
between God and humankind’.
102
Christian Experience, p. 198, echoes Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ on Christ’s baptism: ‘It
was not for Him a baptism of repentance; yet it was an act or experience in which He refused to be
reckoned apart from the other members of God’s family and stood at their side before the Divine
holiness.’
103
Christian Experience, pp. 122–4, 157, 226–9. Cf. Redman, Reformulating, pp. 183–200. In Doctrine of
the Person of Jesus Christ, Mackintosh clarifies that this is a personal union, not a substantial union
(334).
104
Pace Radcliff, Thomas F. Torrance and the Church Fathers, p. 109 (n. 339 confuses Mackintosh’s
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ with his similarly titled Person of Jesus Christ), p. 195.
Influenced by Torrance (Reformulating, pp. xvi, 5), Redman likewise makes the unsupported claim
in ‘Contribution’ that Mackintosh taught that ‘God took our sinful human nature upon himself in
the incarnation’ (532).
105
Cf. G. D. Dragas, ‘T.F. Torrance as a Theologian For Our Times: An Eastern Orthodox Assessment’
(lecture presented at the annual meeting of the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Society, Chicago, 16
November 2012. Cited 3 August 2015. Online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frhvk-MY3dg),
00:49:17–00:54:15. Dragas, Torrance’s one-time Greek Orthodox student, recounts how he and
Torrance disagreed on whether Christ had assumed a fallen human nature. Dragas silenced Torrance
by reading aloud the treatment of Christ’s sinlessness and unfallen humanity in Mackintosh’s
Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ and identifying Mackintosh’s view with the Orthodox view.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 79

delineates both what he appreciates about Barth (the seriousness of his project
and his assault on humanism) and where he demurs (aspects of Barth’s
doctrine of revelation; his ‘excessive actualism’),106 a doctrine of Christ’s fallen
flesh appears on neither list. Secondly, Mackintosh only refers to Barth’s early
works, culminating in the newly translated CD I/1. Mackintosh died two years
before Barth published his second half-volume, in which he openly affirms his
solidarity with Irving (using as a source Mackintosh’s Doctrine of the Person of
Jesus Christ!) and other fallenness proponents.107 Finally, Mackintosh notes that
Barth’s thought is protean and prone to exaggerated expression and apparent
self-contradiction;108 it is perilous, therefore, to presume that Mackintosh
concurred or would have concurred with Barth on any specific theological point
absent an explicit statement to that effect. Whatever he may have communicated
to students like Torrance in a classroom lecture or private conversation,
Mackintosh’s publications support his inclusion in the unfallenness camp. The
evidence indicates that he served the fallenness view as a catalyst, an agent of
change in its favour who himself remained unchanged by it.109

2.3.4 Taking stock of transition

Barth’s massive influence triggered a turning of the tide of opinion regarding a
fallen humanity of Christ.110 The unfallenness theologian whose view we next
examine lived through and well beyond this shift, yet does not explicitly engage
with fallenness proponents on that issue. Barth is the only one of them singled
out for criticism, and then for other reasons (as we shall see below). Nor does
he refer to other modern unfallenness advocates. Like his native continent,
he is an island unto himself. Nonetheless, he does bridge the period between

106
Types, pp. 281–2, 314–19 (quotation from p. 314; italics original).
107
Barth’s avowal of fallenness in KD I/2, which inspired Torrance, bewildered another of Mackintosh’s
former students. In God Was in Christ (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), pp. 16–17, D. M.
Baillie asks if Barth means simply to affirm Christ’s passibility and mortality or to ascribe to him
original sin. Citing Bruce’s Humiliation, Baillie notes the precedents for Barth’s view in the Spanish
Adoptionists, Gottfried Menken, and Edward Irving and claims that the fallenness position has
always been considered heretical. Pace Clark and Johnson, The Incarnation of God, p. 118, n. 29,
Baillie was hardly pro-fallenness.
108
Types, pp. 264–5, 313–14.
109
This claim applies only to the fallenness view. Mackintosh was affected by other aspects of Barth’s
theology, according to Redman, Reformulating, pp. 22–5, although Morgan, Barth Reception, p. 160,
may overstate the case; cf. McGrath, T. F. Torrance, p. 124.
110
In 1912/13, Mackintosh could write, ‘No modern thinker with whom I am acquainted could be said
to hold Irving’s position’ (Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, p. 277, n. 1).
80 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Mackintosh and the twenty-first century with an unfallenness perspective

grounded in biblical scholarship, informed by the church fathers (especially
Athanasius), and representative of theology beyond Scottish Presbyterianism.

2.4 The importance of image: Philip E. Hughes

The life of Anglican cleric Philip Edgcumbe Hughes (1915–90) encompassed

the globe: born in Australia, he received his education in South Africa,
England, and his homeland. He taught for six years at Tyndale Hall, Bristol,
served for three years as secretary of the Church Society, and edited its
periodical, The Churchman, for several years. In 1964 he immigrated to the
United States, where he taught in seminaries until his death. His academic
interests, like his life, were wide-ranging: his many writings include New
Testament commentaries, Reformation studies, and forays into apologetics,
ethics, and dogmatics.111 His magnum opus, published a year before his death,
synthesizes these interests in a Christologically controlled study of theological
anthropology, The True Image: The Origin and Destiny of Man in Christ.112
Hughes structures True Image under three headings: the creation of humanity
in the image of God; the Fall’s damage to that image; and its renewal and
perfection in the reconciliation wrought by Christ, the incarnate image of God.
This tripartite structure is not original to True Image; although it is developed
most fully there, it appears in Hughes’ writings from up to twenty-seven years
prior,113 indicating an enduring theological framework for his thought. We
therefore shall follow the order of this framework in our comments below.

111
Biographical and bibliographical information may be found at ‘History – Secretaries – Philip
Edgcumbe Hughes’, n.p. Cited 3 December 2011. Online: www.churchsociety.org/aboutus/History/
Secretaries-Hughes.asp; P. E. Hughes, ‘The Sovereignty of God – Has God Lost Control’, n.p. Cited
3 December 2011. Online: www.the-highway.com/articleMay99.html; and W. R. Godfrey and
J. L. Boyd III (eds), Through Christ’s Word: A Festschrift for Dr. Philip E. Hughes (Phillipsburg, NJ:
Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1985), pp. vii, 247–52.
112
P. E. Hughes, The True Image: The Origin and Destiny of Man in Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1989).
113
P. E. Hughes, Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition
and Notes (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962; repr. 1986), p. 130; idem, ‘The Creative Task of
Theology’, in Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology: A guidebook to the principal teachings of Karl
Barth, G. C. Berkouwer, Emil Brunner, Rudolf Bultmann, Oscar Cullmann, James Denney, C. H. Dodd,
Herman Dooyeweerd, P. T. Forsyth, Charles Gore, Reinhold Niebuhr, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and
Paul Tillich (ed. P. E. Hughes; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), pp. 9–25 (9–12); idem, Hope for a
Despairing World: The Christian Answer to the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), chs 2–3.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 81

2.4.1 Humanity made and marred in God’s image

Of vital importance to Hughes is humanity’s creation in, not as, the image
of God. The second person of the Trinity is himself the image of God;
humankind, then, is created in the divine Son. This reality means that there
is an ‘affinity’, grounded in creation, between the one who is God’s image and
the ones who are in that image. This creational congruity provides a basis
for the Incarnation, for the Son is not so utterly other than humanity as to
render theanthropic union unfitting.114 Beyond affirming this affinity, Hughes
itemizes six attributes by which humans show that they are in God’s image:
personality, spirituality or religiosity, rationality, morality, authority, and
creativity.115
The Fall occurred when humanity overreached its created bounds by
preferring to be God rather than be in God’s image.116 The effect was the
distortion (but not destruction) of the image’s imprint in humanity by total
depravity, as evidenced by the degradation of the six attributes listed above,117
and by the ultimate ungodlikeness of death.118 Because all human nature was
‘concentrated’ in Adam, the whole race shared in his transgression.119 For
Hughes, it is critical that the Genesis accounts of Creation and Fall be taken
as reliable historiography, lest the historicity of the Christ-event itself come to
be dismissed or Pelagianism’s ‘each his own Adam, each her own Saviour’ be
revived. Thus he rejects Barth’s, Brunner’s, and Reinhold Niebuhr’s symbolic
interpretations, as well as the evolutionary explanation that ‘original sin’ is
the holdover of humanity’s animal heritage, to be overcome through racial
self-effort and the immanent emergence of Christ as the first of a new, higher
species.120

114
Hope, pp. 67–70, 72; True Image, pp. ix, 15–50, 213–14.
115
Hope, pp. 50–5; True Image, ch. 5; cf. ‘Creative Task’, p. 10.
116
Corinthians, p. 205; ‘Creative Task’, pp. 10–11; True Image, pp. 116–17.
117
Hope, pp. 57–64; True Image, chs 5–6, 14.
118
True Image, ch. 10.
119
True Image, pp. 131–3. Hughes claims that the aorist tense of Paul’s ‘all sinned’ (Rom. 3.23; 5.12)
indicates ‘a single definite act in the past – the sin of Adam in which all participated’ (130). Cf.
Corinthians, p. 195. But cf. D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2nd edn, 1996),
69: ‘There may be contextual reasons for thinking that all persons did in fact die when Adam
committed his first sin …; it is just that the aorist verb ἥμαρτον … does not prove it.’
120
True Image, pp. 68–9, 99–101, 113, 121, 129, 224–31. Hughes also rejects Barth’s concept of das
Nichtige as the origin of evil, finding it unsupported in scripture, unrequired by God’s creative work,
and impinging on metaphysical dualism (101–7). Cf. P. E. Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to
the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), p. 445.
82 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

2.4.2 Humanity restored by God’s image

Rather than being an evolutionary breakthrough, the Incarnation is the salvific
descent of the original image of God. Because humanity was created in God’s
image, that is, in the Son, his entrance into human nature restores and fulfils in
his own theanthropic life the design for which humankind was made. The Son
assumes our common human nature from his mother, but his conception by the
Holy Spirit preserves him from inheriting our common fallenness, which would
have left him in need of a Saviour himself. He begins his earthly career with
a humanity ‘unfallen as was Adam’s at first’, yet needing to maintain integrity
despite testing.121 This he does as a human being: while Hughes rejects all kenotic
theories,122 he also denies Christ’s impeccability (non posse peccare) as implying
an Apollinarian overruling of the human by the divine in Christ, as devaluing
his temptations and sinlessness for us in our struggle against sin, and as logically
leading to additional divine attributes, such as impassibility and immortality,
being predicated of his earthly humanity, rendering Calvary impossible.123
Christ’s sinless perfection, then, is not static but an achievement – not that
he ever was sinful or imperfect, but that he preserved his purity in the teeth of
temptation. This victory prepared him for the object of his coming, the offering
up of his spotless life to make atonement for sin.124 Hughes emphasizes that
the manner of Christ’s death matters. He died not from age, accident, disease,
or secret assassination, but willingly, as a condemned evildoer between two
other evildoers and as the substitute for a third (Barabbas), yet all the while
manifestly innocent. The manner marks the meaning of Christ’s death as a
penal substitution by which he satisfied divine justice.125 His subsequent
exaltation from the tomb to God’s throne establishes the originally intended
perfecting of human nature. Through their union with Christ, believers
already taste that perfection. One day it will overtake the whole cosmos126 and
the wicked will be destroyed.127

121
True Image, pp. 134 (quotation from this page), 214–18; cf. Hebrews, p. 188.
122
True Image, ch. 17. ‘Even in his death-throes on the cross and when his lifeless body is laid in the
tomb he is upholding the universe by his word of power (Heb. 1:3)’ (233).
123
True Image, pp. 331–4.
124
Corinthians, pp. 212–13; Hope, pp. 77–9; True Image, pp. 328, 331.
125
Hebrews, pp. 185–6; Hope, pp. 80–2; cf. 113–14; True Image, pp. 335–7, 340–1; in chs 31–32, Hughes
surveys the history of Atonement theories and urges that the Atonement is objective and also
inspires a subjective response.
126
True Image, pp. 381–5, 408–14; cf. Hope, p. 73.
127
True Image, ch. 37 advocates annihilationism.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 83

2.4.3 Patristic and biblical support

In describing God’s plan of redemption, Hughes’ writings draw repeatedly
upon Athanasius for a number of points: God will not allow corruption and
futility to frustrate his purpose for creation, and so, in order to save those made
in his image, he sends the image itself, his Son. The immortal, incorruptible,
impassible Logos took mortal, corruptible, passible flesh like our own – yet
unblemished by sin and thus qualified for sacrifice – so that he might suffer
and die for us, overcome death and corruption in himself by his divine
power, and transmit that victory to us through the process of deification, thus
fulfilling our divinely intended destiny.128 True Image also surveys the other
Christological formulations of the patristic period from the Docetists through
Chalcedon.129 Throughout this section, Hughes works with primary sources
and interprets them in a manner consistent with the unfallenness position.
Thus, for instance, he understands Gregory Nazianzen’s non-assumptus simply
as affirming the Son’s assumption of human nature in its psychosomatic
fullness, not its sinfulness, for our salvation.130 Likewise, in examining Leo’s
Tome, Hughes notes not only that the two natures of Christ each retain their
ontological integrity in the hypostatic union, but also that their union excludes
‘any moral shortfall in the person of the Mediator: “He did not participate in
our faults because he shared in human weaknesses. He took the form of a slave
without stain of sin, increasing the human, not diminishing the divine.”’131 In
a later section, Hughes quotes Augustine’s insistence on Christ’s oneness with
our humanity yet difference from our sin as the prerequisites for his efficacious
atonement.132
Turning to scripture, Hughes carefully discusses both halves of 2 Cor.
5.21. That Christ ‘knew no sin’ refers to his incarnate experience, for it is
on the basis of his sinless humanity that he could atone for the world’s sin.

128
Corinthians, pp. 194–6, citing Inc. 8, 10, 20; Hope, pp. 45–6, 73, 76, citing Inc. 6, 10, 13; True Image,
pp. 219, 276–9, 281–2, 343, 382, citing Inc. 4, 6–10, 13; C. Gent. 1; Ep. Epict. 6–9; Ep. Adelph. 3–4, 8;
Ep. Max.; De decretis 3.14; C. Ar. 1.39, 42; 2.47, 67, 69-70; 3.39; Syn. 51. True Image, ch. 23 covers
Athanasius’ Christology, while ch. 24 argues that Athanasius, like Hughes, saw deification in terms
of soteriological, not ontological, change.
129
True Image, chs 19–27. Hughes’ sole critique of Chalcedon is that it did not incorporate Athanasius’
(and Hughes’) theology of the divine image (327).
130
Ibid., p. 289, citing Nazianzen’s Ep. 101. On p. 277, Hughes had noted Athanasius’ similar position,
citing Ep. Epict. 7–8.
131
Ibid., pp. 312–13 (quotation from latter page; internal quotation is from Tome §§2–4).
132
Ibid., p. 343, citing Augustine, Trin. 4.14.
84 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Hughes links this Corinthian clause to 1 Pet. 3.18 and a series of verses from
the Gospels which attest Christ’s sinlessness.133 That Christ was ‘made sin’
means not that God made Christ a sinner or sinful, which would immediately
invalidate his sacrifice, but that God judged the world’s sin in Christ by
punishing him for it. Here Hughes cites Isa. 53.5-6 as explanatory of Paul’s
meaning.134
Hughes’ interpretation of Heb. 2.18 and 4.15 denies impeccability’s
opposite extreme, the notion that Christ must have possessed sin in order
to sympathize fully with us in the experience of temptation. The presence of
temptation, Hughes notes, does not require sinfulness in the one tempted.
Moreover, Jesus’ perseverance through the greatest temptations produced in
him sympathy beyond that of anyone who has succumbed to temptation’s
lesser degrees.135 His character, as Heb. 7.26 describes it, is utterly free
from the very root of sin, so that his motives as well as his actions are void
of all evil.136
Hughes offers exegetical, historical, and dogmatic support for the
unfallenness view without ever frontally assaulting the opposing position. This
chapter’s final theologian is scarcely so demure. With him, we return to the
succession of Scots explicitly against the fallenness view.

2.5 Fallacious fallenness: Donald Macleod

The final unfallenness theologian to be considered is Donald Macleod (b.

1940). As professor of systematic theology from 1978 to 2011 at Free Church
College,137 Macleod shared Edinburgh’s Mound with New College, where T. F.
Torrance taught theology until retiring in 1979.138 Macleod’s physical proximity
to Torrance’s school belies the doctrinal distance between the two men. In his

133
Mt. 3.17; 17.5; Lk. 23.4, 14, 22, 41, 47-48; Jn 8.46; 10.30; 14.10-11; 17.11, 21-22.
134
Corinthians, pp. 212–15.
135
Hebrews, pp. 123–4, 172–3.
136
Ibid., pp. 272–5.
137
Biographical information taken from ‘Biography’, n.p. Cited 27 May 2013. Online: http://www.
donaldmacleod.org/?page_id=7. Macleod still teaches part-time at Free Church College (now
Edinburgh Theological Seminary), according to ‘Donald Macleod’, n.p. Cited 13 September 2016.
Online: http://www.ets.ac.uk/teaching-faculty/part-time-faculty.
138
Colyer, How to Read, p. 43.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 85

writings, Macleod has rejected Torrance’s, Barth’s, and Irving’s affirmation of

Christ’s fallen humanity.139
Macleod sees Christ’s sinlessness as guaranteed by his deity. Through
incarnation, God may suffer and be tempted, but cannot sin.140 This sinlessness
extends beyond Christ’s actions to the core of his unfallen humanity141 and to
its conception in Mary’s womb.142 The church’s consensus that Christ was free
even from a sinful disposition held sway from ancient times until challenged by
first Irving, then Barth, and finally those like Torrance whom, Macleod alleges,
Irving and Barth profoundly influenced.143 Against their biblical, patristic, and
theological support, Macleod offers an array of counterarguments.144

2.5.1 Issues of interpretation

Biblically, Macleod sees the ‘flesh’ that the Logos became (Jn 1.14) as connoting
human existence within the wretchedness of external conditions brought on
by the Fall.145 Christ’s unfallen nature does not mean that he was untempted
or sheltered within ‘a sanitised spiritual environment’ but that ‘there was in
Him no propensity to sin nor affinity with sin’146 as evidenced by Lk. 1.35,147

139
In his March 1984 article in The Monthly Record, ‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’,
Macleod singled out Irving and Barth for critique. It was this article to which Torrance replied in
a letter to the editor published in the May 1984 Monthly Record. Subsequently, Macleod included
Torrance alongside Irving and Barth as fallenness advocates in ‘Christology’, DSCHT, pp. 172–7,
republished in expanded form as ch. 5 in his Jesus is Lord: Christology Yesterday and Today (Fearn,
UK: Mentor, 2000). Our investigation considers these and the following of Macleod’s works:
Person of Christ; A Faith to Live By: Studies in Christian Doctrine (Fearn, UK: Mentor, 1998); ‘The
Christology of Chalcedon’, in The Only Hope: Jesus Yesterday Today Forever (ed. M. Elliott and J.
L. McPake; Fearn, UK: Mentor, 2001), pp. 77–94; From Glory to Golgotha: Controversial Issues in
the Life of Christ (Fearn, UK: Christian Focus, 2002); ‘“Church” Dogmatics: Karl Barth as Ecclesial
Theologian’, in Engaging with Barth: Contemporary Evangelical Critiques (ed. D. Gibson and D.
Strange; Nottingham, UK: Apollos, 2008), pp. 323–45.
140
Person of Christ, pp. 229–30.
141
‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, p. 51; Person of Christ, pp. 221–2; Faith to Live By, p. 127;
From Glory, pp. 27–8.
142
Person of Christ, pp. 39–42. Macleod prefers to speak of the Spirit’s creation of Christ’s sinless
humanity from Mary’s ovum rather than of a sanctification of Christ’s humanity, which suggests
either that the ovum itself was sinful and required purification or else that, until the Spirit hallowed
it, a sinful foetus existed apart from union with the Logos.
143
Person of Christ, pp. 222–4; Jesus is Lord, pp. 125, 127; From Glory, p. 29; ‘“Church” Dogmatics’,
p. 335, n. 45. Chapter 1.3 of this study demonstrates the implausibility of Macleod’s claim that Irving
was a major influence on Torrance.
144
Lee, ‘Humanity of Christ’, pp. 39–52, attempts to refute several of these counterarguments but is
hampered by misunderstandings of Irving, Macleod, and Kapic.
145
Faith to Live By, pp. 119, 122, 127.
146
Ibid., p. 127; cf. ‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, pp. 51, 53.
147
Person of Christ, p. 225.
86 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Heb. 7.26, and 1 Pet. 1.19.148 Regarding Rom. 8.3, Macleod quotes Calvin’s
interpretation that ‘likeness’ means similarity to, not sameness as sinful flesh.
Macleod also notes that, so far from ‘likeness’ requiring identity between
Christ’s flesh and our own, some modern scholars like John Knox argue that
the term excludes Christ from sharing even a real humanity.149
Moving from scripture to tradition, Macleod complains that Torrance
interprets patristic sources through Barth’s and Irving’s lenses and fails to
distinguish clearly his own opinions from those of the fathers whose thought
he ostensibly describes. For Macleod, Athanasius teaches Christ’s assumption
merely of flesh, not of corruption and sin, and (according to some modern
scholars) had little interest in Christ’s real, historical humanity,150 while
Nazianzen’s non-assumptus is a response to Apollinaris’ denial to Christ of a
human mind, not an affirmation of fallenness, as the context clearly indicates.
Macleod also rebuffs Irving’s appeal to the tradition that Christ took his human
substance from Mary as proof that his humanity was fallen, being taken from
a fallen mother. This tradition’s historical matrix was the church’s anti-Docetic
polemic for Christ’s true humanity, not his fallen humanity. In fact, Cyril of
Alexandria, Augustine, and Leo all deny to Christ a fallen nature.151

2.5.2 Faults in reasoning

Macleod extensively addresses the fallenness proponents’ theological
reasoning. He repeats Dods’s and Bruce’s criticisms152 and adds his own, some

148
‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, p. 51; From Glory, p. 28; ‘“Church” Dogmatics’, p. 339.
149
Jesus is Lord, p. 128, citing Knox’s The Humanity and Divinity of Christ: A Study of Pattern in
Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). Cf. ‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human
Nature?’, p. 51; From Glory, p. 28; ‘“Church” Dogmatics’, p. 336. Macleod does not address how Knox’s
exegesis might be influenced by his presumption that Christ’s genuine humanity is incompatible
with sinlessness and a divine nature (Humanity and Divinity, pp. 46–7, 67–70 [Knox misreferences
Rom. 8.3 as Rom. 8.2 on pp. 33, 44, 51]). Cf. Lee, ‘Humanity of Christ’, p. 43.
150
Jesus is Lord, pp. 125–7. Macleod does not support his claims from the Athanasian corpus. Among
the modern scholars whom he cites is R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of
God (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), p. 451. D. O. Eugenio, Communion with God: The Trinitarian
Soteriology of T. F. Torrance (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014), p. 41, critiques Macleod’s ‘minimal’
patristic coverage with its ‘microscopic analysis that disregards the overall picture’. To Macleod’s
point, one may reply that Athanasius’ alleged unconcern with Christ’s historical humanity need not
exclude great concern with Christ’s humanity as a theological concept.
151
Person of Christ, pp. 167–8, 224–5, citing Nazianzen, Ep. 101 (cf. Jesus is Lord, p. 128); Cyril of
Alexandria, Answers to Tiberius, 4, 13; Augustine, Trin. 13.23; Leo, Tome.
152
‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, pp. 52–3; Person of Christ, pp. 225, 228–9, 286, n. 12 (here
also referencing critiques from Mackintosh’s Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ); Jesus is Lord, pp.
107–10; From Glory, pp. 30–1, 36–7. Cf. Person of Christ, p. 228; Jesus is Lord, pp. 128–9 on Irving’s
and Torrance’s alleged Nestorianism. (Humiliation is the work of Bruce’s which Macleod uses.)
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 87

of which misconstrue his opponents’ views. For instance, he charges Irving and
Torrance with ignoring the historical understanding of the term ‘fallenness’
as the sinfulness, total depravity, and corruption of one’s nature.153 Yet as
Chapter 1 of this study has demonstrated, they use the term in just this sense.
In another case, Macleod claims that Irving denied that Christ’s human nature
was sanctified at conception.154 As support for this claim (which contradicts
Irving’s own clear statement in Christ’s Holiness in Flesh, p. 78), Macleod cites
CW 5, pp. 563–4, where Irving says that Christ’s flesh was not changed at
conception. Here Macleod reads his own understanding of sanctification as
the eradication of fleshly sinfulness into Irving’s words, rather than discerning
that Irving defines sanctification differently. Macleod also cites CW 5, pp.
123–4, where Irving preaches that the mere union of Christ’s divine nature
with his human nature in utero did not sanctify the latter. But Irving’s point is
that the Spirit, not the Son, sanctified Christ’s flesh.155
Others of Macleod’s rebuttals are more germane. To Irving’s proposal that
Christ assumed a fallen humanity as the only sort available, Macleod responds
that this makes fallenness inherent in the definition of humanness, thus
rendering prelapsarian Adam and glorified saints alike inhuman.156 Instead, we
must believe that the God who produced a righteous, holy, glorious Adam157
from dust can produce an unfallen Second Adam from a sinful woman.158 Yet
Christ’s earthly state, though unfallen, was not the same as unfallen Adam’s.
Rather than Adam’s original state of paradisiacal perfection or Christ’s present
state of heavenly glory, his was a state of humiliation, of freely sharing for love’s
sake the sorrows, godforsakenness, and death due to the fallen.159

153
Person of Christ, pp. 228–9; Jesus is Lord, p. 129. In ‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, p. 52
and From Glory, pp. 35–6, Macleod reverses the argument in Barth’s case: given that fallenness in CD
IV/1 means hostility and incapacity, how can a fallen Saviour save?
154
Jesus is Lord, pp. 130–1.
155
CW 5, p. 564 (Lee, ‘Humanity of Christ’, pp. 42–3, in defending Irving against Macleod, also reads
sanctification as eradication into Irving). Macleod’s other arguments in Jesus is Lord, pp. 131–2
(and possibly obliquely in Faith to Live By, p. 134) against Irving’s and Torrance’s ‘incarnational
redemption’ theories equally fail. Pace Macleod, Irving and Torrance do not minimize the
importance of the cross or of Jesus’ lifetime of choices which led him there. See sections 1.1 and
1.3 in Chapter 1 above and G. Pratz, ‘The Relationship between Incarnation and Atonement in the
Theology of Thomas F. Torrance’, Journal for Christian Theological Research 3.2 (1998), n.p. Cited 15
March 2011. Online: http://www2.luthersem.edu/ctrf/jctr/Vol03/Pratz.htm.
156
‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, p. 53; Person of Christ, p. 225; From Glory, pp. 37–8.
157
Faith to Live By, p. 81, rejects modern theology’s portrait of Adam as originally having sinful,
animalistic proclivities. Nor was Adam morally neutral. His proclivities were towards the good.
158
Person of Christ, p. 41.
159
‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, p. 53; Person of Christ, pp. 229–30.
88 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Macleod also detects inconsistency in Irving’s and Barth’s insistence on

the importance of fallen humanness in Christ for establishing continuity with
the fallen race. Both theologians compromise this insistence by allowing for
marked discontinuities between him and us, such as his birth from a virgin,
his awareness of unique sonship, and his never having sinned. On the latter
point, Macleod notes that all Barth’s arguments in CD I/2 against Christ’s
unfallenness could be aimed at Christ’s actual sinlessness, too, for if one must
be fallen to sympathize with the fallen, then how else than by sinning could
Christ sympathize with sinners?160
Finally, Irving insists that only a fallen being could suffer and be tempted
like us: a Christ unfallen is a Christ unfeeling. To the contrary, Macleod
replies, Christ’s heart was not desensitized by any sin of its own; therefore he
was ‘uniquely vulnerable’ to the pain caused by sin in the world. He suffered
not as one fallen but for ones fallen as their atoning substitute. He suffered
greater pain in temptation than we, for he never escaped its full fury by
succumbing. Although unable to be tempted through incipiently sinful lusts,
Christ encountered satanic appeals to his unfallen, sinless weaknesses, his
godly desires, and his very identity as Son. And though impeccable, Christ
conquered temptation only through the Spirit’s strengthening of his faith,
hope, and love.161 In the Incarnation, Christ humbled himself by adding to his
divine nature a lowly human nature and by restraining continually throughout
his earthly life the free exercise of his divine powers.162 In these ways, he
entered fully into human experiences, including suffering and temptation,
and was fundamentally changed by them: ‘We have no right to confine these
things to his human nature …. In Christ, divine personality is caught up in
the process of learning and becoming.’163 Having learnt compassion through
earthly experience of temptation, the ascended Christ uses his sovereignty to
preserve us from being tempted beyond endurance.164 Moreover, because the

160
Person of Christ, p. 225 (Irving); ‘Did Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, p. 52; From Glory,
pp. 33–4 (Barth).
161
Person of Christ, pp. 196, 226–9; From Glory, pp. 38–52 (quotation from p. 39); cf. 113–14; ‘Did
Christ Have a Fallen Human Nature?’, p. 53. Macleod denies that Christ’s divine nature preserved his
human nature sinless, for natures cannot act upon, with, or against one another; only persons may
do so. To claim otherwise implies Nestorianism (From Glory, pp. 51–2; ‘Christology of Chalcedon’,
p. 89; cf. Person of Christ, p. 170).
162
Person of Christ, pp. 205–20.
163
Ibid., p. 69.
164
From Glory, pp. 137–8.
 The Defence of the Unfallenness View among Select Modern Theologians 89

second person of the Trinity is homoousially and perichoretically bound to

the Father and the Spirit, what affects him affects them, too.165 By this means,
the whole Godhead has shared in Christ’s human experiences – particularly
his suffering. Thus the impeccable, unfallen God fully feels our afflictions.166

Conclusion

This chapter has surveyed a succession of selected modern scholars in their

defence of the doctrine that Christ’s humanity was not fallen. Marcus Dods,
followed by A. B. Bruce and H. R. Mackintosh, all weighed Edward Irving’s
fallenness claims and found them wanting. Mackintosh, however, inadvertently
encouraged the rehabilitation of the fallenness view under Karl Barth. Since
then, this view has encountered opposition implicitly during the twentieth
century from Philip Hughes, and explicitly over the turn of the century from
Donald Macleod.
These five opponents of Christ’s fallenness equate that term with original
sin and guilty proclivities towards sin. They deny that Christ assumed a
human nature with such properties – indeed, Dods and Bruce teach that sin
and fallenness are properties only of persons, not natures or physical flesh167 –
and therefore see his humanity as unfallen. Yet this claim is qualified in
significant ways.
First, none of the five argues that Mary was unfallen or that Christ
incarnated himself in some ‘heavenly flesh’ with no relation to his mother.
All of them see the Virgin Birth as signalling divine initiative to preserve
Christ from fallenness, understood as sinfulness. Therefore it is not the case
for these theologians that the Logos found ready to hand, so to speak, a sample
of prelapsarian flesh with which to unite; rather, in his incarnation under the
Holy Spirit’s aegis, flesh fallen in his mother was restored in her Son to an
unfallen, that is, sinless, state. Secondly, all five insist that Christ entered fully
into the temptations, suffering, and sinful milieu of a fallen world and died as
the atoning sin-bearer, all the while remaining personally unfallen (i.e. fully

165
Person of Christ, p. 263; ‘Christology of Chalcedon’, pp. 92–4.
166
Person of Christ, pp. 229–30. Cf. Faith to Live By, pp. 123, 130–1; From Glory, pp. 104–8.
167
Cf. Gunton’s caveat in ch. 1.4.1 above.
90 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

sinless). Thirdly, some disagreement exists over the exact moral character of
the unfallen state. Here Bruce is more open than Dods, Hughes, or Macleod168
to seeing in unfallen Adam and Christ the presence of animal desires needing
to be tamed through a course of development from mere innocence to mature
righteousness. For this reason, Bruce alone of the unfallenness camp allows
that Christ bore ‘sinful flesh’ – that is, sin-prone flesh – which yet was unfallen.
Regardless of any difference, however, all five theologians find the contention
that Christ’s humanity was real and full, not fallen, in scripture and fathers
both Greek and Latin. Dods, Bruce, and Mackintosh even critique patristic
Christology as moving towards the opposite extreme of the fallenness position
by accounting inadequately for Christ’s infirmities. Ironically, several of the
patristic sources on which unfallenness advocates draw for support are the
same as those adduced by their fallenness counterparts! Chapters 3 and 4 seek
to arbitrate this clash of interpretations by investigating the patristic writings
to which both sides appeal. To the church fathers, then, we now turn.

168
Mackintosh’s view is unclear, since he avoids discussing Adam or the Fall in detail. See his Doctrine
of the Person of Jesus Christ, p. 442 (cf. 62); Christian Experience of Forgiveness, p. 52.
 3

The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or

Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity

The previous two chapters have documented the debate between modern
fallenness and unfallenness theologians. Proponents on either side have
referenced the early church, including (and for Gunton, exclusively so) the
Greek fathers. This chapter examines the Greek patristic evidence to determine
how well grounded is the reading which the modern debaters give to the Greek
fathers. The subsequent chapter will investigate the Latin fathers.
Within the limits of this study, we cannot exhaustively canvass every
patristic source to which modern debaters have appealed. We will rely upon
samples deemed representative due to breadth of citation. The patristic sources
cited most widely among the debaters are (in order of descending breadth)
Gregory Nazianzen’s orations and Epistola 101; the works of Augustine and
Athanasius;1 Leo’s Tome; Tertullian’s De carne Christi and Adversus Marcionem,
Hilary of Poitiers’ De Trinitate, and the writings of Cyril of Alexandria2 and
Gregory Nyssen; and Irenaeus’ and Ambrose’s works.
Two further preliminary words are in order. First, this and the next chapter
will refer to ‘original sin’ with reference to the hamartiologies of fathers besides
Augustine, who coined the term, and Leo, who followed Augustine. This broad
use of the term is no more invalid than the application of Tertullian’s term
‘Trinity’ (trinitas) to Greek or earlier Latin theology, and is consistent with
scholarly practice. The same scholarship, however, cautions that Augustine’s
particular formulation of the doctrine of original sin not be read into other
theologians’ versions of the doctrine. Binding these versions together is the

1
Including some works now believed to be pseudonymous. See the section on Athanasius below.
2
Including, in Bruce’s and Torrance’s cases, Adv. anthropomorphitas, now seen as a pseudonymous
compilation and redaction of Cyril’s Answers to Tiberius, Doctrinal Questions and Answers, and
another work, together with Nyssen’s Christmas Sermon, according to L. Wickham in Cyril of
Alexandria, Select Letters (ed. and trans. L. R. Wickham; Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), pp. xlviii–xlix.
92 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

consensus that Adam’s fall into sin put humankind under the dominion of
Satan, death, and disordered desires which incline towards sin. This consensus
holds regardless of individual fathers’ conceptions of our culpability for Adam’s
sin, the mode of its transmission, or its effect on free will.3
Secondly, the Greek fathers surveyed in this chapter had an abiding
interest in Christ’s deliverance of human nature from φθορά, ‘corruption’. The
patristic ascription of this term to Christ’s humanity has led some modern
readers to conclude that the fathers saw Christ’s humanity as morally corrupt.
In fact, though, the early church typically used this term to describe physical
corruption, the ‘decay’ to which material bodies are prone.4
With these points in mind, we turn to the views of five specific Greek
fathers: Irenaeus, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory Nyssen, and Cyril
of Alexandria.

3.1 Theology’s Trailblazer: Irenaeus

Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 130–ca. 200) represents an appropriately catholic

starting point for our investigation. A native of Asia Minor who became a

3
H. Rondet, Original Sin: The Patristic and Theological Background (trans. C. Finegan; Staten Island,
NY: Alba House, 1972); N. P. Williams, The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin: A Historical and
Critical Study (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1927); F. R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines
of the Fall and Original Sin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903); cf. T. A. Noble,
‘Prolegomena for a Conference on Original Sin’, European Explorations in Christian Holiness 2
(2001), pp. 10–17; R. Greer, ‘Sinned We All in Adam’s Fall?’, in The Social World of the First Christians
(ed. L. M. White and O. L. Yarbrough; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), pp. 382–94. Williams’
learned content suffers from a psychological typology (William James’ ‘once-born’ vs. ‘twice-born’
distinction) imposed upon the data so as to favour the ‘sunny genius of Christian Hellenism’ over a
more fanatical, pessimistic ‘“African” or “twice-born” mode of feeling’ (Ideas, p. 257).
4
J. J. O’Keefe, ‘The Persistence of Decay: Bodily Disintegration and Cyrillian Christology’, in In the
Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early Church in Honor of Brian E. Daley,
S.J. (ed. P. W. Martens; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), pp. 228–45; O’Keefe
examines Irenaeus and Athanasius as well as Cyril. J. Roldanus, Le Christ et l’Homme dans la
Théologie d’Athanase d’Alexandrie: Étude de la Conjonction de sa Conception de l’Homme avec sa
Christologie (Leiden: Brill, corrected edn, 1977), pp. 59–65, appears to concur with Athanasius. Cf.
‘φθορά’, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (ed. G. W. H. Lampe; Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), pp. 1474–5.
Misreaders of the fathers on this score include O’Keefe himself in his youth (by his own admission);
Irving, according to Mackintosh, Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ, p. 278; Dorries, Incarnational
Christology, p. 166; G. Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea
of the Atonement (trans. A. G. Hebert; New York: Macmillan, 1960), p. 44; and Tennant, Sources, pp.
310, 312, n. 2. W. J. Burghardt, The Image of God in Man according to Cyril of Alexandria (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1957), pp. 85–100, rightly affirms the primarily physical
meaning of φθορά, but attempts to demonstrate that Cyril also uses ἀφθαρσία in a moral sense as
synonymous with sanctification. By my lights, Cyril is correlating physical incorruption with moral
holiness, not equating incorruption and holiness.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 93

missionary to Gaul, a writer in Greek whose seminal work, Against Heresies,

survives in its entirety only in Latin, Irenaeus transcends the later division of
Eastern and Western Christianity, and his masterpiece influenced orthodox
teachers in both East and West.5 We will study this work alongside his only
other extant complete book, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching.6
The heresies against which Irenaeus writes Against Heresies were primarily
Gnostic. As Irenaeus describes them, they shared the perspective that material
enfleshment is an evil condition. The body is the inept creation of one or
more inferior spiritual beings, and liberation from it is true salvation. Some
Gnostics taught that Christ only appeared to have flesh and to suffer, while
others claimed that Jesus was a naturally born human whose superior soul
won deliverance for himself from the bondage of embodiment. In either case,
the Gnostics’ blurring together of material createdness with sinfulness led to
denials of Christ’s incarnation, atoning death, and resurrection, as well as,
often, to an ethic of carnal indulgence.7 Irenaeus combats these aberrations
with his own theological system.

3.1.1 Creation and Fall in the divine economy

Contrary to the Gnostics, Irenaeus insists on humankind’s creation by no lesser
being than the triune God himself, with the Father acting through the agency

5
Biographical and bibliographical information available from the following sources: P. Parvis, ‘Who
Was Irenaeus? An Introduction to the Man and His Work’, J. Secord, ‘The Cultural Geography of
a Greek Christian: Irenaeus from Smyrna to Lyons’, and I. M. C. Steenberg, ‘Tracing the Irenaean
Legacy’, all in Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy (ed. S. Parvis and P. Foster; Minneapolis: Fortress,
2012), pp. 13–24, 25–33, 199–211, respectively; ‘Irenaeus, St’, ODCC (2005), n.p. Cited 13 March
2012. Online: http://www. oxford-christianchurch.com/entry?entry=t257.e3565; D. Minns,
‘Irenaeus’, in Early Christian Thinkers: The Lives and Legacies of Twelve Key Figures (ed. P. Foster;
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010), pp. 36–51; R. M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (Florence, KY:
Routledge, 1996), pp. 1, 7, 39; St Irenaeus of Lyons, On the Apostolic Preaching (trans. J. Behr;
Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), pp. 1–5. Unless otherwise noted, all citations
of Epid. are from this source and all citations of Haer. are from A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (eds),
The Ante-Nicene Fathers (10 vols; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994; electronic version: AGES
Digital Library version 8, 2000) vol. 1.
6
Torrance, Atonement, pp. 440–1, mentions an Irenaean fragment which may liken the Incarnation
to Christ’s cleansing of a leper (Mt. 8.2-3 par.), but cites no source. In Divine Meaning, p. 67, n. 27,
he cites another Irenaean fragment from a collection appended to Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses (ed.
W. W. Harvey; 2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1857). A search of Harvey yielded
no exact matches to Torrance’s description in Atonement, but fragment 33 does compare Naaman’s
cleansing from leprosy (2 Kgs 5.14) with baptismal regeneration (Harvey vol. 2, p. 497. Cf. Haer.
4.8.2. In any case, Torrance’s interpretation is tentative, as he indicates.
7
Haer. 1.1-9, 11-31. Not all of the heretics opposed by Irenaeus were Gnostics; he also writes against
the Ebionites, who taught that Jesus was a mere man (5.1.3).
94 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

of his two ‘hands’, the Logos and the Spirit. Inasmuch as God formed Adam
from the soil and animated him, materiality is literally the very ground of the
human constitution, and will remain so forever.8 Its goodness derives from
its Creator’s goodness. Yet humanity, though possessing original goodness,
required improvement: in the divine plan or ‘economy’ (Greek οἰκονομία;
Lat. dispositio9) the newly made Adam and Eve were spiritually, morally,
intellectually, and sexually infantile,10 requiring a programme of development
to attain the full measure of the Image of God, Jesus Christ, in whose image
they were made.11
This programme became prolonged by the Fall, which was, ironically, an
attempt at foreshortening the developmental process. The primal couple seized
at a knowledge for which they had been unready.12 Their moral unrestraint
loosed the animal desires innate to the flesh but formerly leashed by innocence
and rationality.13 Mortality, too, became no longer a possibility inherent to
bodily existence14 but a doom dominating it.15

8
Haer. 5 passim, esp. 5.6.1. For the sources of the ‘two hands’ metaphor in scripture and Theophilus
of Antioch, see A. Briggman, Irenaeus of Lyons and the Theology of the Holy Spirit (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012), pp. 104–19; J. Lawson, The Biblical Theology of Saint Irenaeus (London:
Epworth, 1948), pp. 119–39. On Irenaeus’ commitment to materiality, see D. Minns, Irenaeus: An
Introduction (London: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 70–1.
9
With three exceptions, in which dispensatio, creatio, and ex omnibus factus are each used once,
as noted in a fine chapter on ‘economy’ by E. Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), pp. 74–94. On the rationale for Creation’s initial imperfection, cf. Haer.
4.38-39; R. F. Brown, ‘On the Necessary Imperfection of Creation: Irenaeus’s Adversus Haereses
IV, 38’, SJT 28 (1975), pp. 17–25; E. P. Meijering, God Being History: Studies in Patristic Philosophy
(Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1975), pp. 64, 71; Minns, Irenaeus, pp. 88–90.
10
Haer. 2.26.1; 3.22.4, 3.23.5; Epid. 12, 14; A. N. S. Lane, ‘Irenaeus on the Fall and original sin’, in
Darwin, Creation and the Fall: Theological challenges (ed. R. J. Berry and T. A. Noble; Nottingham,
UK: Apollos, 2009), pp. 130–49 (131–3, 136–7).
11
Haer. 4.5.1, 4.11.1. Cf. I. M. Mackenzie, Irenaeus’s Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching:
A Theological Commentary and Translation (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), p. 116; A. Orbe,
Espiritualidad de San Ireneo (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1989), pp. 1–44;
G. Wingren, Man and the Incarnation: A Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus (trans. R.
Mackenzie; Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), pp. 26–38.
12
Minns, ‘Irenaeus’, p. 47; cf. J. Vogel, ‘The Haste of Sin, the Slowness of Salvation: An Interpretation
of Irenaeus on the Fall and Redemption’, Anglican Theological Review 89.3 (2007), pp. 443–59. On
whether Irenaeus sees the Fall as inevitable, cf. Minns, Irenaeus, pp. 82, 91 with Lane, ‘Irenaeus’,
pp. 137–40.
13
Haer. 3.23.5; 4.38.4; 5.8.1-4, 5.9.1.
14
In passages like Haer. 3.20.2 and Epid. 15, Irenaeus can speak of humanity’s possessing immortality
prior to the Fall; however, Haer. 5.12.1-3 explains that humanity lost its life in Eden because it had
only the ephemeral breath of life, not the eternal Spirit of life available in Christ. Cf. Haer. 5.3.1,
which says that humans are naturally mortal, and 5.7.1, which interprets Gen. 2.7 as teaching that
human nature comprises an immortal soul and a mortal body (i.e. a soul incapable of decomposition
and a body capable of it). Cf. Lane, ‘Irenaeus’, pp. 145–6.
15
Haer. 5.10.2, 5.23.2; Epid. 31.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 95

Irenaeus pioneers a doctrine of what later would be termed ‘original sin’.16

Because of the solidarity of the human race, in consequence of Adam’s sin, we
all have become estranged from God.17 Irenaeus repeatedly draws on Jesus’
parable of the strong man and his houseful of possessions (Mt. 12.29 par):
through the Fall, Adam and Eve became captives of the strong man, Satan, and
their descendants are born in his house of captivity, fettered from birth by the
Edenic transgression.18

3.1.2 Salvation through recapitulation

Irenaeus’ resolution to humanity’s prelapsarian incompletion and
postlapsarian incarceration lies in his signature motif of recapitulation (Greek
ἀνακεφαλαίωσις; Lat. recapitulatio). Recapitulation involves the fulfilment
of something earlier in the economy by something later than and parallel to
the earlier. Fulfilment may occur through the latter reflecting, perfecting, or
correcting the earlier.19 Thus, the chiliastic Irenaeus describes the Millennium
as a reflection of Eden, not as a perfecting advance beyond it nor as a correcting
adjustment to it.20 The apocalyptic Beast or Antichrist perfects all evil, not by

16
Tennant, Sources, pp. 282–91. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (repr., Peabody, Mass.: Prince
Press, rev. edn, 2004), p. 170. Lane, ‘Irenaeus’, pp. 141–2; Osborn, Irenaeus, pp. 216–19; Kelly, Early
Christian Doctrines, pp. 171–2; and Wingren, Man and the Incarnation, p. 63, assert that Irenaeus
taught that all humanity shares Adam’s guilt. Powell, Ideas, pp. 196–7, sees an implicit doctrine
of original guilt. M. C. Steenberg, Of God and Man: Theology as Anthropology from Irenaeus to
Athanasius (London: T&T Clark, 2009), p. 46, disagrees, but his proof texts from Haer., when taken
in context, are unconvincing. Lawson, Biblical Theology, pp. 216–17, also disagrees, but confuses
subjective awareness of guilt with the objective fact of guilt; the latter may be present where the
former is limited or absent. G. Bray, ‘Original Sin in Patristic Thought’, Churchman 108.1 (1994),
pp. 37–47 (42–3), admits that Irenaeus’ comments in Haer. 5.16.3 ‘suggest’ a doctrine of original
guilt, but claims that Irenaeus’ ‘probable’ position is that humanity inherits death due to Adam’s
transgression but not responsibility for that transgression. Cf. Greer, ‘Sinned We All’, pp. 382–94. E.
Osborn, ‘Irenaeus: Rocks in the Road’, The Expository Times 114.8 (2003), pp. 255–8 (257), warns
against too sharply bifurcating Irenaeus’ and Augustine’s views of original sin.
17
Haer. 5.17.1, 3.
18
Haer. 3.8.2, 3.18.6, 3.23.1-2, 3.23.7; 4.22.1; 5.21.1, 5.21.3; Epid. 37; cf. Wingren, Man and the
Incarnation, pp. 50–63.
19
For a thorough discussion of recapitulation, see Osborn, Irenaeus, pp. 97–140. The terms perfection
and correction are his; reflection, mine. N. V. Harrison, God’s Many-Splendored Image: Theological
Anthropology for Christian Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010), p. 41, describes three elements
of Irenaean recapitulation: repetition of creation, reversal of the Fall, and summation of history
(hence, reflection, correction, and perfection, respectively). Cf. T. Holsinger-Friesen, Irenaeus and
Genesis: A Study of Competition in Early Christian Hermeneutics (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,
2009), ch. 1, who cautions against ‘recapitulation inflation’: the tendency of modern interpreters
to treat recapitulation as a theoretical framework governing Irenaeus’ theology. Holsinger-Friesen
urges that for Irenaeus recapitulation was an exegetical tool and not a conceptual mould.
20
Haer. 5.32.1, 5.33.4.
96 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

correcting it, but by summing it up so that all evil may be disposed of by the
Beast’s damnation.21 The Virgin Mary reflects Eve’s virginal state but corrects
her disobedience by accepting the Annunciation.22
Irenaeus applies all three forms of fulfilment when speaking of Christ’s
recapitulative work. His Virgin Birth reflects Adam’s formation from virgin soil.
The Lukan Christ’s reversed genealogy, moving backwards from him through the
generations to Adam, indicates that he gives life to them rather than they to him,
thereby perfecting them. His development from childhood to seniority sanctifies
every stage of human life. He faces temptation, particularly regarding food, just
as Adam did, but corrects Adam’s transgression by overcoming temptation. On
the sixth day of creation week, Adam disobeyed at a tree and died; on the sixth
day of the week, Christ obeyed by dying on a tree. His shed blood reflects and
perfects all the righteous blood spilt on earth. By his incarnation, death, and
resurrection, he sets human nature free to share the divine immortality and
incorruptibility, thus perfecting his image in humankind.23

3.1.3 Christ’s flesh and the Fall

In their appeals to Irenaean theology, representatives of both sides in the
modern fallenness debate must grapple with the nuances of his thought. Dods
argues that since unfallen Adam’s humanity was made in Christ’s image, how
much more unfallen must Christ himself be?24 Dods, however, overlooks
Irenaeus’ doctrines of recapitulation and economy: at creation, Adam was
made like Christ, but in redemption, Christ has been made like Adam. On
the other hand, fallenness advocates understand Irenaeus to teach that Christ
was made like Adam in his fallen estate. Irenaeus, however, sees Christ as
recapitulating both Adam’s prelapsarian formation and postlapsarian death.
In the following analysis, we seek to do justice to both sides of Irenaeus’ view.
We begin with Irenaeus’ account of the flesh. In opposing the Gnostic
notion of the flesh as inherently bad, he sharply contrasts the substance of
the flesh with the sinful condition into which it has fallen. All the Pauline

21
Haer. 5.28.2, 5.29.2.
22
Haer. 3.22.3-4; 5.19.1. This motif goes back to Justin Martyr, Dial. 100. All citations of Dial. are from
ANF 1.
23
Haer. 2.22.4-6; 3.19.1; 3.21.9-10, 3.22.3-4; 5.14.1; 5.19.1, 5.21.2-3, 5.23.2. Cf. Mackenzie, Irenaeus’s
Demonstration, pp. 116–17, 127–9, 136–7, 160–1; Aulén, Christus Victor, pp. 28–9.
24
Dods, Incarnation, pp. 484–6.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 97

pronouncements against the flesh and its works refer to the latter, never
the former. Thus Irenaeus distinguishes between mortification and suicide:
Christians must kill their flesh’s sinful lusts and acts, not their flesh itself.25
Furthermore, Irenaeus is confident that Christians do live in freedom from
such lusts and acts.26 He sees the flesh as capable of being purified in this life
from its sinful state and of being maintained in that purity through the Holy
Spirit’s agency.27 The flesh remains mortal, but infusions of incorruptibility by
the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist28 presently prepare it for future resurrection
and, following the Millennium, complete assimilation into the divine
immortality and incorruptibility.29 This entire process of assimilation is made
possible through the person and work of Christ.30
Irenaeus emphasizes that, in the Incarnation, Christ assumed the same
substance of flesh that Adam and all Adam’s offspring share; indeed, if Christ
had assumed some heterogeneous body, whether the Gnostics’ ‘psychical
body’31 or a body formed from soil in exact parallelism to Adam’s formation,
then he would not have been truly human and so could not have reconciled
humanity to God.32 What, then, was the condition of the flesh assumed by
Christ? Irenaeus explains in his Demonstration, ‘So, “the Word became flesh”
that by means of the flesh which sin had mastered and seized and dominated,
by this, it might be abolished and no longer be in us.’33 In a parallel passage in
Against Heresies, Irenaeus writes,

Certainly, it behooved him who could put sin to death and redeem humanity
who was liable to death, to become what [this latter] was, namely, humanity –
humanity which had been drawn into slavery by sin, but was held bound by
death. The result would be that sin would be put to death by humanity, and
humanity would escape from death.34

25
Haer. 5.8, 5.12.1-4, 5.14.1, 5.14.4.
26
Epid. 95–6. Cf. 2, 87, 89–90, 93; Haer. 5.6.1.
27
Haer. 4.13; 5.8; Epid. 41–2; C. T. Bounds, ‘Competing Doctrines of Perfection: The Primary Issue in
Irenaeus’ Refutation of Gnosticism’, StPatr 45 (2010), pp. 403–8, esp. 407. For a Lutheran reading of
Irenaeus that sees him as teaching an ongoing intrapersonal struggle with sin in the Christian life,
cf. Wingren, Man and the Incarnation, pp. 170–5.
28
Haer. 4.18.5; 5.2.2-3 (the Eucharist), 5.8, 5.12.1-4, 5.20.2 (the Spirit).
29
Haer. 5.32-33, 5.35.
30
For example, Haer. 3.19-20; cf. Holsinger-Friesen, Irenaeus and Genesis, pp. 174–214.
31
Haer. 1.6.1.
32
Haer. 3.21.10.
33
Epid. 31; ET Behr, Demonstration, p. 60.
34
Haer. 3.18.7; ET St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies (Book 3) (trans. and annotated by D. J.
Unger, with an introduction and further revisions by I. M. C. Steenberg; New York: The Newman
Press, 2012), p. 92 (brackets translators’).
98 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

These statements seem to imply that the Logos assumed human nature in its
sin-subjected condition. Yet immediately following each of these statements,
Irenaeus stresses that Christ received the same formation as Adam by being
born of a descendant of Adam and by being born virginally as a parallel to
unfallen Adam’s formation from virgin soil. Irenaeus’ overarching point is
that, in the Virgin Birth, humanity has been re-created: it is humanity due
to Christ’s deriving his substance from Adam; it is a re-creation due to that
substance’s receiving its formation through a direct act of God using undefiled
material, as in Eden.35 As Irenaeus writes elsewhere, in the Virgin Birth, ‘The
pure One open[ed] purely that pure womb which regenerates men unto God,
and which He Himself made pure.’36 Here the utmost purity of Christ’s birth –
and hence his humanity’s freedom from the domination of sin – rests on
multiple supports: the virginity of his mother, the holy character of her Son,
his sanctification of her, and the regenerative effect of his birth. The purity
of Christ’s birth corresponds to the purity of his infant life. In interpreting
Isaiah 7, Irenaeus links together the Virgin Birth with its offspring’s instinctual
rejection of evil: ‘Before the child knows good from evil, He shall reject the
evil, to choose good.’37 In sum, when speaking of Christ’s human origin,
Irenaeus describes it as the restoration of human nature to a prelapsarian state
of innocence – ‘paradise regained’.
Irenaeus also sees the Incarnation as recapitulating humanity’s battle with
Satan.38 Christ undergoes temptation just as Adam did. Rather than implying
that Christ struggles with disordered inclinations, Irenaeus’ account of the
desert temptations has Christ dispassionately and calculatingly countering

35
Haer. 5.1.3 contrasts fallen Adam with the work of the Logos and the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation
‘in order that Adam might be created [again] after the image and likeness of God’ (ANF 1, p. 527).
Cf. A. Houssiau, La Christologie de saint Irénée (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain
& Gembloux, France: J. Duculot, 1955), pp. 237–9, 243; A. Orbe, Teología de san Ireneo (4 vols.;
Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1996) vol. 2, pp. 353–4, 359; Wingren,
Man and the Incarnation, pp. 79–110, each of whom sees the Incarnation as repristinating human
nature’s original purity. By contrast, Baker, ‘The Place of St. Irenaeus’, p. 22, claims that Irenaeus sees
the Virgin Birth in terms only of formal parallelism and consubstantiality with Adam, not of the
condition of the humanity assumed. Cf. Mackenzie, Irenaeus’s Demonstration, pp. 135–6, for an
attempt at a balanced statement.
36
Haer. 4.33.11; ET ANF 1, p. 509.
37
Epid. 53 (Isa. 7.16 quoted from Behr, Demonstration, p. 75); cf. Osborn, Irenaeus, p. 110. In Haer.
3.21.4, Irenaeus attributes this instinct to Christ’s deity. Since Irenaeus never ascribes a contrary
impulse to Christ’s flesh, we should understand the Christ-child’s humanity as being perfectly
submissive to the divine will. Cf. Haer. 5.1.3. Holsinger-Friesen, Irenaeus and Genesis, pp. 136–7,
n. 125, speaks of Irenaeus’ ‘acute interest in the text of Isaiah 7.10-17’ and discusses its possible
recapitulatory significance in relation to Gen. 2–3.
38
For example, Epid. 31.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 99

Satan’s stratagems.39 Likewise, Christ is unburdened by original guilt: to free

the strong man’s captives, the incarnate Word enters the prison, unfastens the
bonds of original guilt and Adamic transgression from the captives, and binds
the strong man, Satan, with those same bonds; Christ himself is the liberator,
not a prisoner.40 Irenaeus explicitly contrasts the condition of Christ’s flesh
with the fettered condition of all other flesh: Christ’s ‘righteous flesh has
reconciled that flesh which was being kept under bondage in sin, and brought
it into friendship with God’. Irenaeus continues,

If, then, any one allege that in this respect the flesh of the Lord was different
from ours, because it indeed did not commit sin, neither was deceit found
in His soul, while we, on the other hand, are sinners, he says what is the
fact. But if he pretends that the Lord possessed another substance of flesh,
the sayings respecting reconciliation will not agree with that man. For
that thing is reconciled which had formerly been in enmity. Now, if the
Lord had taken flesh from another substance, He would not, by so doing,
have reconciled that one to God which had become inimical through
transgression.41

Irenaeus’ distinction between the righteous flesh of Christ and the flesh in
bondage indicates that, from birth forward, they share simply a common
substance rather than a common condition of enmity towards God.42
Irenaeus combines the themes of Christ’s birth, unbound condition, and
victory over Satan in a typological interpretation of the birth of Jacob (Gen.
25.26). Like Jesus, Jacob emerges from the womb as ‘the supplanter – one who
holds, but is not held; binding the feet, but not being bound; striving and

39
Minns, Irenaeus, pp. 106, 112–4. R. Williams, ‘“Tempted as we are”: Christology and the Analysis of
the Passions’, StPatr 44 (2010), pp. 391–404, traces how Irenaeus’ paralleling of Christ’s temptations
with Adam’s suggested to later commentators that Christ, like Adam, was tempted while in a
prelapsarian state of sinlessness.
40
Haer. 3.18.2, 6; 4.33.4; 5.21-24 (cf. Epid. 37), note especially 5.21.3’s line that ‘the Word bound
[Satan] securely as a fugitive from Himself, and made spoil of his goods, – namely, those men whom
he held in bondage’ (ANF 1, p. 550, emphasis mine). Here Christ clearly is distinguished from those
in captivity, pace Minns, Irenaeus, pp. 116, 130, and Baker, ‘The Place of St. Irenaeus’, pp. 22–3, but as
repeatedly recognized by Orbe, Teología, vol. 1, pp. 52, 62, 680–7; vol. 2, pp. 353, 359, and Wingren,
Man and the Incarnation, pp. 84–7, 98, 102–3, 109, n. 82, 114–15, 119–20, 133–5, 149, n. 3.
41
Haer. 5.14.2-3; ET ANF 1, pp. 541–2. Note that Irenaeus paraphrases 1 Pet. 2.22 but changes ‘He
committed no sin’ to ‘it committed no sin’ (‘it’ referring to Christ’s flesh) and ‘neither was deceit
found in His mouth’ to ‘in His soul’. On the significance of these changes as portraying the total
sinlessness of Christ’s human nature, see Orbe, Teología vol. 1, pp. 685–6.
42
Houssiau, La Christologie, p. 246.
100 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

conquering; grasping in his hand his adversary’s heel, that is, victory’.43 From
nativity forward, Christ exists unshackled by any sin or guilt, whether original
or actual, and his freedom enables him to free the captives and to capture
their captor.
Regarding Pauline passages which speak of Christ’s becoming sin
(2 Cor. 5.21), a curse (Gal. 3.13), and the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. 8.3),
Irenaeus does not deal with 2 Cor. 5.21 but does refer to Gal. 3.13 once
and Rom. 8.3 twice.44 The reference to Gal. 3.13 occurs in the midst of a
catena of verses quoted to prove Christ’s true humanity by his experience of
suffering and death, in opposition to Docetism. Irenaeus does not indicate
whether he equates being made a curse with being crucified per se or with a
spiritual condition superadded to crucifixion (i.e. the pangs of damnation).
The former interpretation is preferable, given that Irenaeus describes the
Antichrist, not Christ, as bearing in himself the damnation of all evil.45 Justin
Martyr, who influenced Irenaeus,46 insisted that Christ was cursed not by
God but by the Jews.47
Since Irenaeus’ first quotation of Rom. 8.3 appears amid a lengthy
reflection on the Virgin Birth, what has been said above about that event’s
sanctifying significance bears recalling. The salvific worth of the theanthropic
union, Irenaeus explains, is that by it God imparts immortality to humanity.
One who receives salvation in the present may anticipate ‘making such
progress as to become wholly like [consimilis fiat/συνεξομοιωθῇ] Him who
died for them. For He was made in the likeness [similitudinem/ὁμοιώματι]
of sinful flesh that He might condemn sin, and then cast it out of the flesh as
condemned; and also, that He might invite humankind to His own likeness
[similitudinem/ὁμοίωσιν].’48 In these lines, ‘to become wholly like Him’
corresponds with ‘that He might invite humankind to His own likeness’,

43
Haer. 4.21.3; ET ANF 1, p. 493 (italics original). Cf. Orbe, Teología vol. 4, pp. 326–7, nn. 11–12. As
Orbe indicates, Irenaeus interweaves historical, ecclesiological, and Christological interpretations of
this text.
44
Haer. 3.18.3 (Gal. 3.13), 20.2; 4.2.7 (Rom. 8.3). Wingren, Man and the Incarnation, p. 86, sees an
allusion to Rom. 8.3 in Epid. 31.
45
Haer. 5.28.2, 29.2. Cf. Wingren, Man and the Incarnation, pp. 187–8.
46
Grant, Irenaeus, p. 1.
47
Dial. 93–5.
48
Against the Heresies (Book 3), p. 96 (italics Unger and Steenberg’s; Lat. and Greek: Irénée de Lyon,
Contre les Hérésies Livre III Tome II: Texte et Traduction (trans. A. Rousseau and L. Doutreleau; SC
211; Paris: Cerf, 1974), pp. 390–1; cf. 185, n. 13.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 101

while ‘who died for them’ foreshadows the line which quotes Rom. 8.3.
Hence the ‘likeness of sinful flesh’ relates to Christ’s sharing our experience
of sin’s consequence, death, and contrasts with ‘His own [present] likeness’
as immortal, which we shall experience with him. As demonstrated above,
Irenaeus does not understand Christ’s own flesh as genuinely ‘sinful’, but
neither does he take ‘likeness’ in a Docetic sense. We will draw further
conclusions after examining the other passage in which Irenaeus quotes
Rom. 8.3.
In that passage, Irenaeus appeals to an Old Testament type of the crucified
Christ:

For the law never hindered [Jews] from believing in the Son of God; nay,
but it even exhorted them so to do, saying that men can be saved in no
other way from the old wound of the serpent than by believing in Him who,
in the likeness of sinful flesh, is lifted up from the earth upon the tree of
martyrdom [τῷ ξύλῳ τῆς μαρτυρίας], and draws all things to Himself, and
vivifies the dead.49

Here Irenaeus blends allusions to Genesis 3 (‘the old wound of the serpent’; ‘the
tree’), Numbers 21 (the incident of the bronze serpent), Rom. 8.3, and John’s
Gospel (3.14; 5.21-40;50 12.32). Some of this intertextuality reflects other early
Christian literature: Irenaeus’ mentor Justin writes that the impaled bronze
serpent demonstrates that the serpent which inflicted sin upon humanity is
conquered by the Cross.51 The Epistle of Barnabas sees the inanimate yet life-
giving serpent on a pole as a type of the crucified, dead Christ who gives life.52
Irenaeus does not indicate whether he views the bronze serpent as symbolic
of the defeated devil, of Christ’s likeness to sinful flesh, or of something else.
As before, though, he sets Rom 8:3 in the context of Christ’s saving death.
Orbe comments on Irenaeus’ use of Rom 8:3 in this passage, ‘The Son of God
is lifted on high as a human being. Although innocent, he is consubstantial
with sinful human beings. He has the same human nature. And due to being

49
ANF 1, p. 465 (Greek: SC 211, p. 391).
50
John 5.21-40 speaks of Christ’s vivifying the dead and of μαρτυρία.
51
Dial. 91, 94, 112.
52
Barn. 12 in M. W. Holmes (ed. and trans.), The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 3rd edn, 2007), pp. 418–21.
102 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

consubstantial, “innocent flesh” can save “sinful flesh”.’53 For Irenaeus, then,
Christ’s being ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ means that he shares the same
fleshly substance which in all others exists in a sinful condition.54 It may also
underscore that Christ died, just as sinful persons do, and died in a manner
particularly befitting a sinner – as one judged guilty and condemned to a
shameful, agonizing death.
Irenaeus’ naming of Christ’s Cross as ‘the tree of martyrdom’ draws us into
his theology of martyrdom. His teacher Polycarp had died a martyr, as did
Christians during Irenaeus’ time in Lyons.55 As noted above, Irenaeus believes
that Christians may be free from sinfulness of the flesh in this life. He sees
Christian martyrs as the holiest of believers, for they die not due to any sins of
their own but due to their slayers’ sins. A martyr dies with a heart full of love
for enemies and a mouth full of prayer for executioners’ pardon. Thus ‘the love,
goodness, and mercy of martyrs in the midst of their torments are the sign of
their perfection. The martyr does nothing other than to imitate the Christ, the
perfect martyr.’56 For Christ, then, to die ‘upon the tree of martyrdom’ is for
him to die without sinfulness in his flesh.

3.1.4 Christ’s flesh and death

Yet if Christ’s flesh is free from all guilt and sin, how can he experience their
consequences, suffering and death? Irenaeus explains:

Indeed, just as He was man that He might undergo temptation, so He was

the Word that He might be glorified. The Word, on the one hand, remained

53
Orbe, Teología vol. 4, p. 22 (here Orbe also cites Justin and Barnabas on the bronze serpent). Cf. vol.
1, pp. 680–3, particularly the following: ‘In his virtue, the Word assumed an innocent, “righteous
flesh,” of the same substance and nature as the sinful nature of Adam and his children. In Christ,
sinful flesh became innocent and holy. … It would be absurd for the flesh of humanity to remain – in
Christ –alienated and in enmity toward God’ (682; italics original; ET mine).
54
Houssiau, La Christologie, pp. 243–6. Wingren, Man and the Incarnation, pp. 86–7, thusly interprets
Epid. 31 and its allusion (according to him) to Rom. 8.3.
55
Irenaeus, Apostolic Preaching, pp. 1–2; Parvis, ‘Who Was Irenaeus?’, pp. 14–16. Cf. D. J. Bingham,
‘The Apocalypse, Christ, and the Martyrs of Gaul’, Shadow, pp. 11–28.
56
Houssiau, La Christologie, pp. 188–9 (quote from latter page; ET mine), summarizing Haer.
3.18.4-6; cf. Osborn, Irenaeus, pp. 241–2. M. A. Donovan, One Right Reading?: A Guide to Irenaeus
(Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), p. 83, sees a chiastic structure in 3.18.2-7, which
covers Christ’s incarnation and suffering, with 18.5’s discussion of martyrdom as the x-point. This
structure serves to stress the martyrs’ imitatio Christi. Wingren, Man and the Incarnation, p. 155,
paradoxically claims that martyrs’ deaths show both that they are still partially mastered by sin and
death and that they imitate the crucified Christ, whom Wingren everywhere grants was unmastered
by sin and death.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 103

quiescent [requiescente/ἡσυχάζοντος], that He could be tempted and

dishonored and crucified and die; on the other hand, the man was absorbed
[absorto], that He might conquer and endure and show Himself kind, and
rise again and be taken up [into heaven].57

As previously noted, Irenaeus’ anthropology allows that human flesh is

inherently capable of passion and death. He sees the Logos as passive enough
to allow temptation, suffering, and death to touch his human weakness, yet
active enough to overcome them and to grant life both to others and to his
own human nature. Throughout Jesus’ life – whether in his birth, baptism,
resistance to temptation, healings, or resurrection58 – human sin, corruption,
and death were being ‘absorbed’ or ‘swallowed up’ by the divine victory of
incorruption and immortality (1 Cor. 15.54).59
Inasmuch as the Logos, through voluntary restraint of his divine influence
over his flesh, suffers the physical effects of the Fall, Irenaeus applies the term
‘fallen’ (πεπτωκυῖαν) to Christ’s flesh when speaking of its mortality: ‘And
He demonstrated the resurrection, becoming Himself “the firstborn from
the dead”, and raising in Himself fallen [“deiectum (πίπτω)”] man … as God
had promised, by the prophets, saying, “I will raise up the fallen [‘deiectum
(πίπτω)’] tabernacle of David”, [Amos 9:11/Acts 15:16] that is, the flesh
[descended] from David.’60
In relation to sin, however, Christ maintains an unfallen state throughout
his life. Irenaeus notes that in tempting Jesus to false worship, Satan urges him
to ‘fall’ (Mt. 4.9). Irenaeus sees this word as an admission that to serve Satan

57
Haer. 3.19.3; ET Against the Heresies (Book 3), pp. 93–4 (brackets Unger and Steenberg’s); cf. 179–81,
n. 25. Note the irony of the Word being quiet (the primary meaning of ἡσυχάζω). Houssiau, La
Christologie, pp. 192–5, provides literary and theological analysis of this passage, noting that the
absorption of the human spells an end to its frailty, not to its reality (195).
58
Haer. 3.19.1-2 (birth); 3.17.1-3 (baptism; cf. 3.9.3); 3.19.3 (temptation, works, resurrection). In his
comments on Christ’s baptism, Irenaeus links the rite with regeneration unto incorruption. The
implication is that Christ’s humanity, too, received this at baptism. In Irenaeus’ dynamic view of the
Logos’ interaction with his human nature, the making incorrupt of Christ’s flesh in the Jordan does
not contradict the same occurrence initially in Mary’s womb and ultimately in Joseph’s tomb – a
point missed by Briggman, Irenaeus, pp. 59–77. Cf. D. A. Smith, ‘Irenaeus and the Baptism of Jesus’,
TS 58 (1997), pp. 618–42.
59
Haer. 3.19.1 alludes to this verse, which is still on Irenaeus’ mind in 3.19.3 (as quoted above).
60
Epid. 38; ET Irenaeus, Apostolic Preaching, p. 64 (final bracketed insertion translator’s); Lat. and
Greek: Irénée de Lyon, Démonstration de la Prédication apostolique (trans. A. Rousseau; SC 406;
Paris: Cerf, 1995), p. 136. Epid. 62 also applies Amos 9.11/Acts 15.16 to Christ’s resurrection, in
which he raises up David’s ‘fallen’ (πεπτωκυῖαν in Acts 15.16; ‘dirutum (πίπτω)’ in SC 406, p. 174)
fleshly tent. Dorries, Incarnational Christology, p. 157, n. 26, therefore is incorrect that Irenaeus
never used the term ‘fallen’.
104 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

is to ‘fall’ from God’s glory to the verge of death. Unlike Adam and all other
humans, Christ refuses this temptation.61 Rather than falling into sin, the Son
comes ‘stooping low [descendens/καταβὰς] even to death’62 as a Saviour from
sin and death.

3.2 Defending the incarnate God: Athanasius

In a different century and continent, Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (ca.

296–373), arch-defender of the Nicene confession of Christ’s consubstantiality
with God the Father,63 felt Irenaeus’ influence64 and shared many of his views:
humans were created in the image of the Logos, with their natural mortality and
passions suspended so long as they remained in paradisiacal fellowship with
God. The Fall left the race enslaved by Satan to sinfully disordered passions,
condemned for Adam’s transgression, and sentenced to death and physical
corruption. Salvation has come through the Logos’ becoming human in order
that, by his birth, earthly life, death, and resurrection, humanity might be
renewed in his image.65 Yet unlike Irenaeus, Athanasius portrays prelapsarian

61
Haer. 5.22.2–23.1. Irenaeus repeatedly uses forms of πίπτω in this passage, according to Irénée de
Lyon, Contre les Hérésies Livre V Tome II: Texte et Traduction (trans. A. Rousseau, L. Doutreleau and
C. Mercier; SC 153; Paris: Cerf, 1969), p. 285. In his Dial. 88, Irenaeus’ mentor Justin had spoken of
‘the race of men, who from Adam had fallen [ἐπεπτώκει] under death and the deceit of the serpent’
(Williams, Ideas, p. 174). Irenaeus teaches that Christ’s humanity fell under death but not under the
devil’s deceit.
62
Haer. 3.18.2; ET ANF 1, p. 446; Lat. and Greek: SC 211, p. 345.
63
For biographical and bibliographical information, see D. M. Gwynn, Athanasius of Alexandria:
Bishop, Theologian, Ascetic, Father (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); K. Anatolios, Athanasius
(London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 1–39; Weinandy, Athanasius, pp. 1–10; A. Pettersen, Athanasius
(Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1995), pp. 1–18.
64
K. Anatolios, ‘The Influence of Irenaeus on Athanasius’, StPatr 36, pp. 463–76; idem, Athanasius:
The Coherence of His Thought (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 206; E. P. Meijering, Orthodoxy and
Platonism in Athanasius: Synthesis or Antithesis? (Leiden: Brill, 1974), pp. 12, 15–17, 105.
65
C. Gent. 2–3, 32–4; Inc. 3–13, 19–21, 44, 54. The condemnation of all humanity for Adam’s
transgression appears clearly in Inc. 20: because all humans must pay their debt by dying, Christ
died for all ‘in order to make them all guiltless and free from the first transgression [τῆς ἀρχαίας
παραβάσεως]’ (Athanasius, Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione [ed. and trans. R. W. Thomson;
Oxford: Clarendon, 1971], pp. 182–3 [Greek on all even-numbered pages and ET on all odd-
numbered pages hereafter cited from this source]). Cf. Inc. 7–8, which references ‘the transgression’
(ἡ παράβασις) which dooms all to death and corruption (Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione,
pp. 150–3). Nevertheless, G. W. H. Lampe, ‘Christian Theology in the Patristic Period’, in A
History of Christian Doctrine (ed. H. Cunliffe-Jones; London: T&T Clark, 1978; repr. 2006), pp.
21–180 (157), and Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 347, deny that Athanasius saw Adam’s fall as
engendering ‘actual guilt’ in the rest of the race. Cf. Bray, ‘Original Sin’, p. 43, Tennant, Sources, pp.
313–14; Williams, Ideas, p. 261; Roldanus, Le Christ, pp. 70–1, 132–3.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 105

humans as quasi-Platonic philosophers66 in a penultimately perfect state,67 not

children requiring maturation, thus increasing their culpability for the Fall.

3.2.1 The Word and his flesh

Fundamental to Athanasius’ thought is the distinction between the Logos and
his flesh. The former is the divine subject and agent in Christ; the latter is the
human object and instrument (ὄργανον)68 of the Logos’ action. Athanasius
uses the term ‘flesh’ in the biblical sense as a synecdoche for the whole of
human nature, including the soul, although the latter is underemphasized.69
Because the Logos has united himself to the flesh, its expressions of passibility
and mutability (e.g. birth, growth in wisdom, hunger, ignorance, fear, suffering,
and death) are predicable of the Logos. They are not, however, proper to
him in an unqualified sense,70 for he continues impassible and immutable in
himself, as befits his divinity, and he progressively transmutes his flesh so that
it comes to participate in his divine attributes71 as a prototype of Christians’

66
C. Gent. 2–3; Meijering, Orthodoxy, pp. 5, 8–9; Anatolios, Athanasius, pp. 44–6; C. Kannengiesser,
‘Athanasius of Alexandria and the Foundation of Traditional Christology’, TS 34 (1973), pp. 103–13
(108), notes that Athanasius’ Platonic Adam only appears once, at the beginning of the Alexandrian’s
first book.
67
C. Gent. 3 says that God intended humanity to stay in its Edenic state; Inc. 3, though, says that in
addition to paradise, humanity was to inherit heaven.
68
Weinandy, Athanasius, p. 48, urges that this term not be interpreted as ‘an impersonal instrument
employed as a tool, but as the vehicle by which and through which the Son himself genuinely and
truly experiences and acts in a personal human manner’.
69
Ep. Epict. 8. Cf. Tom. 7; C. Ar. 3.30. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of these sources are from
P. Schaff and H. Wace (eds), The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (2 series; 28 vols; repr., Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson, 1994; electronic version: AGES Digital Library version 8, 2000), series 2, vol. 4.
Scholars debate whether Athanasius affirmed a human soul in Christ, whether the bishop changed
his mind on this matter, and why he said so little on the subject. For a sampling of views, see C.
A. Beeley, The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Conflict in Patristic Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2012), pp. 142, 152, 163, 165, 176–7; G. D. Dragas, ‘Athanasius Contra Apollinarem
(The Questions of authorship and Christology)’, Church and Theology 6 (1985), pp. 5–609 (289–99);
idem, Saint Athanasius of Alexandria: Original Research and New Perspectives (Rollinsford, NH:
Orthodox Research Institute, 2005), ch. 1; Anatolios, Coherence, pp. 67–78; Pettersen, Athanasius,
pp. 109, 130–2; Weinandy, Athanasius, pp. 91–6; Hanson, Search, pp. 446–56; Roldanus, Le Christ,
pp. 252–76; A. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition (trans. J. Bowden; 2 vols; Atlanta: John Knox,
2nd edn, 1975) vol. 1, pp. 308–28.
70
P. J. Leithart, Athanasius (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), pp. 121–9, examines the interplay of predicate
and property in C. Ar. 3 and urges on the basis of 3.31, 32, 34, 38, 41, 54 that Athanasius sees
both the flesh and its passions as proper to the Logos just as the Logos is proper to the Father –
the intrapersonal union in Christ reflects the interpersonal union in the Godhead. Yet 3.31, 34, 41
distinguish the divine attributes proper to the Logos from the creaturely attributes proper to the
flesh. Athanasius always qualifies his ascription of the latter to the Logos. Cf. Anatolios, Athanasius,
pp. 66–74; Roldanus, Le Christ, p. 181.
71
Anatolios, Coherence, pp. 142–54. As Anatolios notes, this Athanasian version of communicatio
idiomatum belies the claim that he saw Christ’s humanity as a mere ‘tool’ or ‘space-suit’ (the latter
metaphor taken from Hanson, Search, p. 448).
106 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

deification.72 Armed with this crucial distinction, Athanasius can say that
the Logos took accursed flesh without becoming accursed himself,73 that he
sanctified, liberated, and saved his own flesh but that, strictly speaking, he did
not sanctify, liberate, or save himself.74
This process of redemptive transmutation within Christ’s flesh began in utero.
He not only received from his mother the substance common to humanity,75
but ‘transport[ed] our errant race [πλανηθεῖσαν γέννησιν] into himself ’;76
‘took a servant’s form, putting on that flesh which was enslaved to sin’;77 and,
coming in the likeness of sinful flesh, ‘became sin for us and a curse’.78 While
it may be possible to interpret these phrases merely as the imputation of error,
slavery, sin, and curse to Christ or as an analogy whereby, for example, his
servitude to God contrasts with our servitude to sin, such interpretations are
questionable on both formal and material grounds. Formally, Athanasius treats
the Son’s assumption of creatureliness, flesh, infirmity, sin, and curse in parallel
manner and as states illustrative of one another, which may imply that he sees
an ontological dimension to them all.79 Thus the bishop glosses Phil. 2.7-8,
interpreting verse 8’s ‘he humbled [ἐταπείνωσεν] himself ’ with reference to the
assumption of a ‘body of humiliation [ταπεινὸν]’ (Phil. 3.21) and verse 7’s ‘taking
the form of a slave [δούλου]’ with ‘putting on the enslavement [δουλωθεῖσαν]
of the flesh to sin’ (cf. Rom. 6–8).80 Materially, Athanasius describes sin

72
For a study of the patristic (particularly Greek patristic) doctrine of deification, see N. Russell, The
Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004);
Russell covers Athanasius’ view (166–88) and traces its origin to Irenaeus (105, 169). See also
Roldanus, Le Christ, pp. 165–7.
73
C. Ar. 2:47, 55-56; Ep. Epict. 9. Torrance in Trinitarian Faith, p. 161, claims that ‘Athanasius could
say that “the whole Christ became a curse for us”’, quoting C. Ar. 2.47, but the original setting of this
line is Athanasius’ denial that the ‘whole Christ’ became accursed any more than the whole Logos
became flesh: ‘We do not conceive the whole Word Himself to be flesh, but to have put on flesh … we
do not simply conceive this, that the whole Christ has become curse and sin, but that He has taken
on Him the curse’ (NPNF2 4, p. 374).
74
C. Ar. 1:46-50; 2:61, 72; Ep. Epict. 4, 9.
75
Ep. Epict. 2, 4–5, 7.
76
Ep. Adelph. 4; ET Anatolios, Athanasius, p. 238; Greek: NPNF2 4, p. 576, n. 8.
77
C. Ar. 1.43; ET NPNF2 4, p. 331.
78
C. Ar. 2.55; ET NPNF2 4, p. 378. Athanasius quotes Rom. 8.3 both in this passage and in the above-
cited Ep. Adelph. 4.
79
C. Ar. 2.47, 55; Ep. Epict.8; Roldanus, Le Christ, pp. 167–70; but cf. Cardinal Newman’s note on 2.55
regarding Christ’s ‘real manhood and imputed sinfulness’ and on C. Ar. 1.43 that Christ assumed a
‘fallen nature’ from Mary, yet without original sin (NPNF2 4, pp. 378 n. 8 and 331, n. 2, respectively),
as well as St Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ (trans. J. A. McGuckin; Crestwood, NY: St
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), pp. 56–7, for a denial by one of Athanasius’ successors that Christ
became flesh in the same way that he became sin.
80
C. Ar. 1.43; Greek: W. Bright, The Orations of St. Athanasius Against the Arians (Ann Arbor, MI:
University Microfilms International, 1978), p. 45 (ET mine).
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 107

as having become internal to the flesh, so that the Logos could not eliminate
sin simply through external ethical instruction, for ‘being continually held
captive [by Adam’s transgression], it admitted not the Divine mind’. Rather,
the Logos himself became internal to sinful flesh, indwelling it so as to expel
its sin and make it ‘capable of the Word’ so that ‘we might have a free mind’.81
Likewise, Isaiah and Peter do not say that Christ merely cured our sins and
infirmities through an external healing but that he carried them to the Cross
in his own body, internalizing them in order to expunge them.82
Athanasius insists that the Logos was not polluted by the tainted flesh
which he took. His birth from a virgin indicates that his body was pure, a
fit temple83 and priestly garment.84 Such language indicates a cleansing of
Christ’s humanity from sin at conception. Athanasius believes that there were
precedents for such prenatal purification: Jeremiah and John the Baptist were
among those ‘made holy and clean from all sin’ even in the womb. Yet personal
sinlessness did not exempt them from the consequence of Adam’s sin, the curse
of death and corruption. Liberation could come only through the assumption
and transmutation of human nature initiated by the Incarnation.85 By this
means the Logos would do a more thorough work, freeing humanity not only
from sin, but also from the mortality and corruptibility,86 which, while latent
within prelapsarian flesh, had become actualized by the Fall.87
This transmutation of human nature in Christ that had begun in Mary’s
womb continued until Joseph’s tomb. In his childhood and even during
adulthood, Christ carried the infirmity of human ignorance and steadily

81
C. Ar. 1.60; 2.56; ET NPNF2 4, pp. 341, 378. Athanasius’ logic demands that Rom 8:3, which he
quotes in 1.60 and 2.55, be read as teaching that Christ assumed genuinely sinful flesh. Note also the
interplay of noetic concepts: the personal Rational Word (Logos) cannot convert our rational mind
by spoken rational words (associated in 1.60 and 2.55 with the Mosaic Law) but only by uniting
ontologically our rationality with his own.
82
C. Ar. 2.47; 3.31, both citing Isa. 53.4 and 1 Pet. 2.24. Cf. C. Ar. 2.69.
83
Inc. 8. Athanasius speaks of Mary and of the body of Christ which she conceived as ‘pure’ because
‘unalloyed by intercourse with men’ (Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, p. 153).
84
C. Ar. 2.7. As Leithart, Athanasius, p. 32, notes, Athanasius here parallels the making of Aaron’s
sacerdotal robe by women with Mary’s role in producing flesh for Christ.
85
C. Ar. 3.33; ET NPNF2 4, p. 411; cf. n. 2, where Newman points out that Athanasius’ view of Jeremiah
and John was not idiosyncratic. Athanasius quotes Rom. 5.14, indicating that he interprets this verse
not as contrasting Adam’s transgression with a different class of sin (i.e. sin extra legem) but with
personal sinlessness. On the necessity of Christ’s internalizing our mortality, see Inc. 44; Dragas,
Saint Athanasius, pp. 90–1.
86
Inc. 17, with a quotation from 1 Pet. 2.22 on Christ’s sinlessness.
87
Thus Steenberg, Of God and Man, p. 168, distinguishes between ‘corruptibility as a natural condition
in man’ and ‘the actual corruption of the human being’ in Athanasius’ thought. (Italics his.) Cf.
Dragas, Saint Athanasius, pp. 30, 36.
108 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

overcame it in his own humanity for the sake of our instruction.88 His baptism
was a moment of sanctification (in the sense of consecration to service)
for his flesh.89 Throughout his earthly life, ‘He brought about the complete
eradication from the flesh of every bite of the serpent and the repulsion of
any evil that had sprung up from the movements of the flesh. … So the Lord
himself says: “The prince of this world is coming and he finds nothing in me”’
(John 14:30).90 For instance, the fear of death is due to our alienation from
God and bondage by earthly passions.91 In his first Gethsemane prayer and
his cry of dereliction, Christ’s humanity displayed this fear of death, the same
minding of merely human things that he had rebuked in Peter (Mt. 16.23). But
his succeeding prayers, ‘Not my will but yours’ and ‘Into your hands I commit
my spirit’, exhibited him overcoming his human will’s weakness by his divine
will’s immutable might.92 After a lifetime of conquering the flesh’s infirmities,
he offered up its mortality and corruptibility on the Cross as a holy sacrifice in
order to complete their destruction.93 While the life-giving Logos could have
restrained his mortal flesh from dying, he could only uproot mortality from
his flesh and ours by passing through death into resurrected life.94
Christians benefit from Christ’s victory, becoming impassible by present
renunciation of sinful passions, becoming immortal and incorruptible by future
resurrection. Celibates and martyrs exemplify the freedom which Christ has
won. Celibates triumph over erotic passion, anticipating the unmarried state
of the eschaton. Martyrs are free from thanatophobic passion and overcome
the passion of their sufferings by their hope of immortality.95

3.2.2 Pseudo(?)-Athanasian writings

Thus far we have examined writings whose attribution to Athanasius is
accepted generally in current scholarship. Both fallenness and unfallenness

88
C. Ar. 3.38-53. Cf. Pettersen, Athanasius, pp. 123–9.
89
C. Ar. 1.41, 46-47, 50. Athanasius treats Jesus’ sanctification and messianic anointment as
synonymous.
90
C. Ar. 2.69; ET Anatolios, Athanasius, p. 162.
91
C. Gent. 3; cf. Ep. Max. 3’s citation of Heb. 2.15 (NPNF2 4, p. 579).
92
C. Ar. 3.54-58. Cf. Pettersen, Athanasius, pp. 128–9.
93
Inc. 9; Ep. Epict. 6.
94
Inc. 21–2, 26, 31; Roldanus, Le Christ, pp. 170–1; pace Beeley, Unity, pp. 136–8, who misreads
Athanasius as teaching that Christ’s body was incorruptible from conception.
95
Inc. 48–52; C. Ar. 2.69.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 109

advocates also appeal to works whose Athanasian authorship modern scholars

often deny: the Fourth Oration Contra Arianos and the two books Contra
Apollinarium.96 The Fourth Oration discusses the dynamic mediation of Christ:
in his humanity, he receives from us our passions and infirmities (including
those expressed in the cry of dereliction) and offers them to God in order to
destroy them. In his humanity, too, he receives from God power and exaltation
in order to share them with us. In his divinity, he receives nothing from either
party, being immutably impassible and omnipotent.97 The Fourth Oration thus
preserves the Athanasian understanding that salvation is wrought internally
within the theanthropic union.
Contra Apollinarium opposes Apollinaris’ alleged doctrines that Christ had
heavenly flesh rather than flesh of Adamic descent and that, within that flesh,
the divine Logos substituted for the human mind (or soul). Both doctrines
seek to insulate Christ from becoming sinful in becoming human: flesh
descended from Adam has ‘become accustomed to sin, and has received the
transmission of sin’; but sin is conceived in the mind, which from childhood
onward delights in evil (Gen. 8.21) and employs the flesh to commit it, hence
human nature en toto, both flesh and mind, is captive to sin.98 Apollinarianism
reduces soteriology to simulacra: Christ mimics human nature and we mimic
his sinlessness.99
In response, Contra Apollinarium charges Apollinaris with mimicking the
errors of Marcion and Mani by seeing sin as intrinsic to human nature rather
than as the dysfunction of it.100 God created Adam sinless in both flesh and mind.
When Adam yielded to temptation, Satan introduced his seed (Mt. 13.25) and
law (Rom. 7.23) of sin within human nature, ‘and thenceforward sin was active

96
On the Fourth Oration, see A. H. B. Logan, review of M. Vinzent, Pseudo-Athanasius: Contra
Arianos IV, JTS (NS) 49.1 (1998), pp. 382–5; Hanson, Search, p. 418. On Contra Apollinarium (also
spelled Apollinarem), see C. E. Raven, Apollinarianism: An Essay on the Christology of the Early
Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), pp. 242–53; cf. Dragas, ‘Athanasius Contra
Apollinarem’, for a massive rebuttal, and Hanson, Search, pp. 645–51, for a counter-rebuttal. For a
time, Charles Kannengiesser denied Athanasian authorship of the Third Oration, but has publicly
withdrawn this view (Anatolios, Athanasius, p. 246, n. 74). Cf. C. Stead, review of C. Kannengiesser,
Athanase d’Alexandrie évêque et écrivain, JTS (NS) 36.1 (1985), pp. 220–9.
97
C. Ar. 4.6-7.
98
C. Apoll. 1.2, 7; 2.6, 8, 11. Quotation from 2.8: ET Later Treatises of S. Athanasius, Archbishop of
Alexandria, with Notes; and an Appendix on S. Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret (trans. members of
the English Church; Oxford: James Parker & Co., and London: Rivingtons, 1881), p. 126; Greek: PG
26, p. 1144b. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of C. Apoll. are from Later Treatises.
99
C. Apoll. 1.2, 20; 2.1, 3, 11.
100
C. Apoll. 1.12, 14, 19; 2.3, 8.
110 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

… in the direction of every appetite [ἐπιθυμίαν]’.101 Christ restored human

nature to its original, unfallen condition by assuming a complete human
nature, both flesh and mind. This assumption of a complete human nature
does not make Christ sinful, for sin is no part of human nature per se. No seed
or law of sin existed in Christ’s humanity, as Satan discovered upon tempting
him.102 When scripture attributes ‘flesh’ to Christ, the definition is ‘the orderly
form of our whole constitution, but without sin’.103 Likewise, his human soul
(or mind) was ‘constituted … in a sinless state’.104 Because his humanity was
both complete and sinless, he was able to ransom our bodies with his body and
our souls with his soul on the Cross.105
Against Apollinaris’ theory of salvation by imitation, these books argue the
insufficiency of Christ’s merely avoiding sinning; he must have avoided sinning
in the very nature which had sinned – that is, one derived from Adam. His
sinless life in our common nature reveals that this nature has been renewed in
him and may be so in us. This renewal occurred in the ‘wondrous “generation”
[Isa. 53.8]’106 of the Virgin Birth, which marks both Christ’s continuity with
the human race, since he sprang ‘from the seed of David and Abraham, and of
Adam’, and also his discontinuity with its failure, ‘having taken from the Virgin
all that God originally fashioned and made in order to the constitution of man,
yet without sin as also the Apostle says, In all points like to us, yet without sin
[Heb. 4.15]’.107 Hence the Christ-child, like Adam in Eden, knew neither good
nor evil, but unlike Adam, rejected evil rather than God’s command.108
All the above appears in Contra Apollinarium’s use of key Pauline texts.
The Son’s likeness to sinful flesh (Rom. 8.3) is an authentic participation in the
Adamic substance of flesh, but not in its sinfulness, which Christ condemns by
embodying flesh ‘unreceptive of sin’ (ἀνεπίδεκτον ἁμαρτίας).109 The ‘form of

101
C. Apoll. 1.15; ET Later Treatises, 106; Greek: PG 26, p. 1120c; cf. 2.6, 8.
102
C. Apoll. 1.15; 2.10. Both passages quote Jn 14.20; 2.10 says that Christ’s flesh was ‘without carnal
desires and human thoughts’ because ‘the will belonged to the Godhead only’ (Later Treatises,
p. 128). Cf. 1.17 (‘And in this consists the marvel – that the Lord became Man, and yet apart from sin
[Heb. 4.15]: for He became wholly a new Man to exhibit what He could do’ [Later Treatises, p. 109;
cf. 124 n. ‘m’]).
103
C. Apoll. 2.18; ET Later Treatises, p. 141.
104
C. Apoll. 1.19; ET Later Treatises, p. 111.
105
C. Apoll. 1.18-19.
106
C. Apoll. 2.6; ET Later Treatises, p. 123.
107
C. Apoll. 2.5; ET Later Treatises, p. 122 (italics original); cf. 1.13. The author assumes Pauline
authorship of Hebrews.
108
C. Apoll. 2.6, combining Isa. 7.16 with Genesis 3.
109
C. Apoll. 1.7 (ET mine; Greek: PG 26, p. 1104c); 2.6. See ‘ἀνεπίδεκτος’ PGL, pp. 135–6.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 111

a servant’ (Phil. 2.7) does not describe sinful human nature, as some heretics
claim;110 nor does it suggest an insubstantial appearance, as say other heretics;111
rather, it refers to Logos’ assumption of the original formation of Adam, that
is, of both body and soul.112 That body suffered and died, while that soul
experienced sorrow and distress, not as subject to sin, death, and corruption,
but as subject to God’s plan to condemn sin through Christ’s sinlessness and
liberate humanity from death and corruption through his descent into hades
and resurrection.113
Contra Apollinarium’s insistence on the assumption of flesh renewed to
Edenic purity (and in that sense unfallen) complements the statements in
Athanasius’ recognized writings regarding the assumption of enslaved, errant
flesh. It bears recalling that, prior to nineteenth-century sceptical scholarship,
they all were seen as the work of one presumably self-consistent author.114
Although Athanasius, as we saw above, describes the Incarnation as the
assumption of ‘flesh which was enslaved to sin’ as part of ‘our errant race’,
nowhere does he claim that Christ’s flesh was sin-servile or errant following
the moment of its assumption. Rather, Athanasius sees Christ’s flesh as purified
from sin at conception, while he endures throughout his life the consequences
introduced by sin into human experience – ignorance, fear of death,
corruptibility, the curse of mortality. Contra Apollinarium agrees that Christ
experienced these consequences, while insisting that they did not spring from
any sinful propensity within Christ, but that a re-creation of fallen humanity
occurred in the Virgin’s womb. Combining Athanasius’ acknowledged works
with Contra Apollinarium, we may say that what the Logos assumed was
from ‘our errant race’ but that, by assuming it, he immediately renewed it in a
‘wondrous “generation”’; he took sin-slaved flesh and instantly it became sin-
free, God-slaved flesh.115 Yet like Jeremiah and the Baptist, Christ carried the

110
C. Apoll. 2.4.
111
C. Apoll. 2.1.
112
C. Apoll. 1.5, 12; 2.1, 3, 10.
113
C. Apoll. 1.5, 14, 17. The use of μορφῇ in these passages, as well as context, suggests that the author
still has in mind Phil. 2.7’s ‘form [μορφῇ] of a servant’ when writing these comments. See PG 26,
pp. 1101–02ab; 1117c–20b.
114
Dragas, Saint Athanasius, pp. 133–4.
115
C. Ar. 2.10, 14 says that humanity, enslaved to corruption and idols, was freed by Christ, and
interprets Phil. 2.7’s ‘form of a servant’ with reference to the servitude of created beings to their
Creator Logos rather than the servitude of fallen beings to sin, as in C. Ar. 1.43. Evidently Athanasius
is capable of diverse nuancing of Phil. 2.7.
112 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

consequences of humanity’s erring and sin throughout his earthly course. In

this manner he ‘became sin’ and bore it.116 In Christ’s case, however, his divinity
progressively overcame those consequences, culminating in his resurrection.
On the other hand, Contra Apollinarium differs from Athanasius’ accepted
writings with its emphasis on the soul or mind of Christ. This fact may suggest
development beyond the bishop’s own thought.117 It is a development also
championed by our next Greek father.

3.3 ‘The unassumed is the unhealed’: Gregory Nazianzen

The theology of Gregory Nazianzen (329/330–389/90),118 briefly archbishop

of Constantinople and even more briefly president of the Second Ecumenical
Council held there in 381, intersects with several strands of this study. His
thought overlaps with Athanasius’; he influenced Augustine, fellow Cappadocian
Gregory Nyssen, and Cyril of Alexandria to varying degrees; his Epistola 101
and other writings helped to shape the Christological debate leading up to the
Council of Chalcedon;119 and modern fallenness and unfallenness theologians
alike claim support from that epistle and its epigrammatic ‘the unassumed is
the unhealed’ (Τὸ … ἀπρόσληπτον, ἀθεράπευτον).120 We shall examine this

116
Cf. Roldanus, Le Christ, p. 174.
117
On this possibility, see the literature cited in notes 69 and 96 above.
118
These are the consensually accepted dates: cf. C. A. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and
the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008),
pp. 5, 61; J. McGuckin, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (Crestwood, NY: St
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), pp. vii, xi; D. F. Winslow, The Dynamics of Salvation: A Study in
Gregory of Nazianzus (Cambridge, MA: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1979), p. 1. For proposed
birthdates as early as 325/326, see F. W. Norris, L. Wickham and F. Williams, Faith Gives Fullness
to Reasoning: The Five Theological Orations of Gregory of Nazianzen (Leiden: Brill, 1991), p. 1; B.
E. Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 3. For biographical information, see
McGuckin’s biography; Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. 3–62; Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp.
1–60; A. Hofer, Christ in the Life and Teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013).
119
Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. 59 (Chalcedon), 277–83 (Athanasius), 303–9 (Nyssen), 321
(Augustine), 322 (Cyril). For his trinitarian doctrine, the Chalcedonian Council awarded Nazianzen
the title ‘the Theologian’, an appellation previously used only of the Apostle John (Beeley, Gregory of
Nazianzus, p. vii; Norris, Wickham and Williams, Faith Gives Fullness, p. 12, n. 56; Hofer, Life and
Teaching, pp. 2–3).
120
Ep. 101.5; Greek: PG 37:182c. As often noted, this dictum has roots in Origen, Dialogue with
Heracleides 7 (e.g. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 127; Norris, Wickham and Williams, Faith Gives
Fullness, pp. 155–6). Nazianzen was much indebted to Origenism (Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp.
271–3). M. F. Wiles, ‘Soteriological Arguments in the Fathers’, StPatr 9 (1966), pp. 321–5 (322), finds
the non-assumptus’ origins not only in Origen but also in Tertullian.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 113

line in its context and in light of Nazianzen’s crucial Theological Orations on

the Son (Ors. 29 and 30) and his Christmas Oration (Or. 38).121

3.3.1 The mind of Christ

Nazianzen penned Epistola 101 in old age against the same Apollinarian errors
opposed in Contra Apollinarium. Against these errors, Nazianzen insists that
Christ derived his flesh from the Virgin, not heaven, and acquired a human
rational mind (or soul), too. Thus his human constitution was complete.122
This insistence by Nazianzen, however, was not new. Earlier in his career,
he had confronted the Eunomian denial of a human mind in Christ.123
Nazianzen echoes Origen and anticipates Augustine by seeing the human
mind as the mediator between the divine Mind and its antithesis, the material
body and world.124 To omit a human mind in the Incarnation would result
in the indecorous direct union of Godhead with ignoble flesh.125 Against
the Apollinarians’ protest that two minds cannot occupy the same person,
Nazianzen replies that they have committed a category mistake by treating
immaterial realities as though material.126
Far more important to Nazianzen than these ontological considerations,
though, are soteriological concerns: ‘The unassumed is the unhealed.’
Nazianzen’s whole soteriology rests on the correlation between the Incarnation
and deification (θέωσις):127 like Irenaeus, he sees Christ’s advent as restoring
the developmental trajectory towards God which humanity lost in Eden.
This Christ does by uniting to himself not only the various constituents of

121
For the contexts and significance of these orations and Ep. 101 as crucial texts for Nazianzen’s
theology, cf. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. 39, 40, 43, 122–43; McGuckin, Saint Gregory
of Nazianzus, pp. 390–3; Norris, Wickham and Williams, Faith Gives Fullness; Saint Gregory of
Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (trans.
F. Williams and L. Wickham; Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002). Both Dods,
Incarnation, p. 532, and Weinandy, Likeness, pp. 28–9, appeal to Or. 38. Barth, CD I/2, pp. 195–6,
and Torrance, Trinitarian Faith, pp. 162–3, cite Or. 30.
122
Ep. 101.4-10. For an extensive analysis of this epistle, see Hofner, Life and Teaching, ch. 4.
123
Norris, Wickham and Williams, Faith Gives Fullness, pp. 66, 153 (citing Ors. 2.23; 22.13; 38.13).
124
Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 227, n. 388; cf. Or. 38.13.
125
Ep. 101.8, 10-11.
126
Ep. 101.6-7.
127
Nazianzen himself coined this nominal form from the verb θεόω (Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus,
p. 117). On Nazianzen’s entire theology as following a kenotic-theotic parabola, see F. W. Norris,
Gregory Nazianzen’s Doctrine of Jesus Christ (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1971).
114 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

humanity (mind and body) but also the various experiences (πάθη)128 of
humanity (e.g. birth, temptation, suffering, death), sanctifying them by
contact with his divinity.129

3.3.2 The epithets of Christ

The New Testament describes the Incarnation by phrases such as ‘made sin’ (2
Cor. 5.21), ‘made a curse’ (Gal. 3.13), and ‘taking the form of a slave’ (Phil. 2.7),
as well as by recording Jesus’ cries of distress at Gethsemane and Golgotha. In
Orations 29–30, Nazianzen explains how he interprets such passages using a
theanthropic hermeneutic. As divine, the Son is guiltless and uncursed, the
Father’s equal, and without any divergence of will from the Father; neither
his own divinity nor his Father forsake his humanity in the midst of the
Passion130 – indeed, as God, the Son is impassible.131 In becoming human, he
condescends to the troubling titles and experiences given above. Yet Nazianzen
makes clear that sin has no continuance in the totalities of Christ’s human
nature and experience.132 The Holy Spirit purified Mary in body and soul to
prepare her for Christ’s conception, and the very act of uniting divinity with
humanity in her womb deified and sanctified the human nature involved,133
so that his nativity frees us from our birth-bonds.134 Jesus had no need of
baptismal cleansing, but was baptized to hallow the baptismal waters so that
they in turn might cleanse us.135 Nazianzen appeals to the principle that like
sanctifies like: Christ’s holy mind and flesh restore others’ sinful mind and
flesh.136 In all these cases, sinlessness is attributed to Christ’s humanity, not
merely to his divinity. This sinlessness includes freedom from original, not just

128
On this term’s significance for Nazianzen, see Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. ix–x. On its range of
meaning in patristic discourse, see ‘πάθος’, PGL, pp. 992–5.
129
Winslow, Dynamics, pp. 61, 64–6, 90, 100, 190–2; cf. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. 118–21.
130
Or. 30.5-6, 12.
131
Ep. 101.4.
132
Ors. 30.12, 14, 21; 38.13.
133
Or. 38.13; cf. 29.19; Ep. 101.8.
134
Or. 38.17. For Nazianzen’s negative view of birth as involving slavery and passion, cf. Ors. 30.3; 40.2.
135
Ors. 29.20; 30.20; 38.16; 39.15-16 (on Christ’s baptism); 40.29 (on Christian baptism). In Or. 39.15,
Nazianzen says that Christ was baptized ‘to bury the whole of the old Adam in the water’ (PG 36,
p. 352b; ET NPNF2 5, p. 357). This line could be misread as describing Christ’s humanity as ‘the
old Adam’, were it not for 39.13, which distinguishes between the new Adam, Christ, and the old
Adam whom he saves. Thus, in context, Nazianzen is preaching that the baptism of Christ’s spotless
humanity readies the waters to regenerate our sin-smirched humanity.
136
τῷ ὁμοίῳ τὸ ὅμοιον ἁγιάσας (Ep. 101.9 [PG 37, p. 188b]); cf. Ors. 30.20-21; 38.13-14; Ep. 101.8-9;
Hofner, Life and Teaching, pp. 114–17. The principle ‘like sanctifies like’ could be applied as well to
Christ’s own humanity by viewing the divine Mind in Christ as sanctifying the human mind in him.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 115

actual, sin, for Nazianzen’s dispute with the Apollinarians concerns whether a
full humanity in Christ entails original sin. Nazianzen agrees with Apollinaris
that original sin plagues humanity137 and that Christ lacks original sin; their
disagreement concerns whether that lack implies a lack in Christ’s humanity.
In what sense, then, are Christ’s negative titles and experiences applicable
to him? Here Nazianzen’s comments must be read carefully, as he does not
always mean precisely the same thing.138 Sometimes the application is a verbal
counterfactual:

The one who releases me from the curse was called ‘curse’ because of me;
‘the one who takes away the world’s sin’ was called ‘sin’ and is made a new
Adam to replace the old. In just this way too, as head of the whole body,
he appropriates my want of submission. So long as I am an insubordinate
rebel with passions [πάθεσιν] which deny God, my lack of submission will
be referred to Christ. But when all things are put in submission under him,
when transformed they obediently acknowledge him, then will Christ bring
me forward, me who have been saved, and make his subjection complete. …
Thus it is that he effects our submission, makes it his own and presents it to
God. ‘My God, my God, look upon me, why have you forsaken me?’ seems to
me to have the same kind of meaning. He is not forsaken either by the Father
or, as some think, by his own Godhead. … No, in himself, as I have said, he
expresses our condition. We had once been the forsaken and disregarded;
then we were accepted and now are saved by the sufferings of the impassible
[ἀπαθοῦς πάθεσιν]. He made our thoughtlessness and waywardness his
own, just as the psalm [Ps. 22], in its subsequent course, says.139

The context is an exegesis of Paul’s doctrine of Christ’s eschatological

subordination to his Father (1 Cor. 15.24-28). Nazianzen sees his own

137
On the Apollinarian doctrine of original sin, see Wickham’s discussion in On God and Christ, p.
150; R. A. Norris Jr., Manhood and Christ: A Study in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), pp. 112–21. For Nazianzen’s doctrine and the debate over whether he
taught original guilt, cf. Tennant, Sources, pp. 318–19; Williams, Ideas, pp. 282–92; Bray, ‘Original
Sin’, pp. 43, 46; Lampe, ‘Christian Theology’, p. 157; Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 348–52;
Winslow, Dynamics, p. 69. For Nazianzen’s realistic sense of his personal involvement in Adam’s sin,
see, in addition to the passages cited by Kelly, Ors. 19.13-4; 22.13 (PG 35, pp. 1060b–61a; 1145bc;
ET St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations [trans. M. Vinson; FC 107; Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 2003], pp. 104–5, 127).
138
As Hofner, Life and Teaching, ch. 3, shows, Nazianzen uses a range of related terms and ideas for
the mixtures of differents found in such cases as the Incarnation, psychosomatic union, character
traits, his own friendship with Basil of Caesarea, and Christ’s relationship to believers. Hofner warns
against reducing this varied usage to a single source (i.e. Stoic notions of mixture) or meaning (e.g.
ontological blending).
139
Or. 30.5; ET On God and Christ, pp. 96–7 (italics original); Greek: PG 36, pp. 108d, 109ab. Cf. Ep.
101.12; Winslow, Dynamics, p. 101.
116 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

insubordination, including the God-denying passions resultant upon Adam’s

sin, as perpetually being ‘referred to Christ’ until the eschaton. This is a verbal,
counterfactual referral rather than an actual participation by the ascended
Christ in our rebellious passions, for later in the same discourse Nazianzen
denies the latter possibility.140 He makes the same point regarding the cry of
dereliction: Jesus’ humanity is not forsaken even as he humanly ‘expresses
our condition’ of ‘thoughtlessness and waywardness’. Christ assumes our
estrangement’s responsibility and results but not its reality. Likewise,
Nazianzen’s oration afterward places on Christ’s lips the words of a parallel
psalm (Ps. 59.3) and explains that its references to ‘my iniquity’ and ‘my sin’
mean ‘not that he did, but that he did not, have iniquity and sin’.141 In light of all
the above, Nazianzen’s language of Christ’s being ‘called’ sin and curse should
be taken to mean that these terms are counterfactual: he received our epithets
to redefine our reality.142
Sometimes, however, Nazianzen has in view a more factual, yet still
nuanced, application of terms and experiences to Christ. Of Phil. 2.7, he
writes, ‘He was actually subject as a slave to flesh, to birth, and to our human
experiences [πάθεσι]; for our liberation, held captive as we are by sin, he
was subject to all that he saved.’143 An incautious reading would see the ‘all’
to which Christ was subject as including our captivity to sin. But Nazianzen
specifically lists flesh, birth, and πάθη as those things to which Christ became
a slave. The ‘all’ to which Christ was subject is the ‘all that he saved,’ and he did
not save sin, but πάθη, birth, and flesh from sin. Similar is Nazianzen’s allusion
to Phil. 2.7 amid his discussion of the Epistle to the Hebrews’ attributions of
learning, obedience, suffering, petition, submission, and temptation to Christ:
‘Receiving an alien “form” he bears the whole of me, along with all that is
mine, in himself, so that he may consume within himself the meaner element,
as fire consumes wax or the Sun ground mist, and so that I may share in what
is his through the intermingling.’144 The ‘meaner element’ here specifically

140
Or. 30.14, on Heb. 7.25.
141
Or. 30.12, on Ps. 59.3; ET On God and Christ, p. 103.
142
Cf. Norris, Wickham and Williams, Faith Gives Fullness, pp. 51, 163. Norris’ language suggests that he
sees sin, curse, rebellion, deviancy, and godless passions as belonging factually, not counterfactually,
to Christ’s humanity. Norris does not attempt to harmonize this view with Nazianzen’s frequent
assertions of Christ’s sinlessness.
143
Or. 30.3; ET On God and Christ, pp. 94–5; Greek: PG 36, p. 105c.
144
Or. 30.6; ET On God and Christ, p. 97; Greek: PG 36, p. 109c. As Hofner, Life and Teaching, p. 92, n. 4,
points out, Nazianzen’s metaphors reflect Ps. 67.3 (LXX) and Sir. 43.4.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 117

indicates human flesh as opposed to soul and as created, not merely as fallen:145
for Nazianzen, the prelapsarian condition of humanity involved ‘a “creative
struggle”’ between flesh and soul. The natural obduracy of the flesh provided
the soul with opportunity for self-mastery and with the necessary traction
for the soul’s theotic marathon. The Fall turned fleshly passions from starting
blocks into stumbling blocks, which hindered the soul’s progress.146 In Christ’s
earthly life, Nazianzen finds fleshly wants and weaknesses restored to their
original purpose. Gethsemane witnesses Jesus’ human will quite naturally
struggling with God’s will, yet submitting at last.147 His submission shows that
his passions are sinless: there is infirmity absent iniquity.148
In sum, Nazianzen recognizes a process of self-healing or self-sanctification
by the divine Logos of his assumed human nature and its experiences. This
process of θέωσις aims at overcoming created frailty and finitude along with
the Fall’s exacerbation of both. What is missing in Christ’s humanity, at least
after the moment of his conception, is any lingering sinfulness. Nazianzen
grants the imputation of sin to Christ, even after the Ascension, but not any
instantiation of sinfulness within him.

3.4 Imagining incarnation: Gregory Nyssen

We turn now to Nazianzen’s Cappadocian comrade, Gregory Nyssen (ca. 335–

394/5).149 The younger Gregory depicts the Incarnation with several pointed
images and phrases. Christ’s assumption of human nature is like a shepherd

145
In discussing human psychosomatic constitution, Ep. 101.8 equates flesh with ‘the meaner element’
and clay, as well as equating mind with ‘the higher’ element and the image of God (On God and Christ,
160). For Nazianzen the divine image lies in the soul, not the body (Ors. 22.13; 38.11). On Nazianzen’s
sometimes vague and inconsistent theological anthropology, cf. Norris, Doctrine, pp. 70–8, 143–8.
146
Winslow, Dynamics, pp. 55, 68; R. R. Ruether, Gregory of Nazianzus: Rhetor and Philosopher (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1969), pp. 134–5; cf. Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 227, n. 383 on Or. 38.11.
147
Or. 30.12.
148
The interpretation given above blends elements of Winslow, Dynamics, pp. 55, 68, and Norris,
Wickham and Williams, Faith Gives Fullness, p. 171. Another possible interpretation of Or. 30.12
is that Nazianzen treats Christ’s ‘Let this cup pass’ in Gethsemane as parallel to ‘Why have you
forsaken me?’ at Calvary, that is, as a statement which does not reflect his actual human disposition.
On this reading, Christ’s human will can no more resist the Father’s will than can Christ’s divine will,
but Christ prays as if he were an ordinary man with a contentious will, thereby identifying himself
with our situation, before revealing by his ‘Not my will, but yours be done’ that he has been merely
role playing. Cf. the translation in On God and Christ, pp. 102–3, with that in E. R. Hardy and C. C.
Richardson (eds), Christology of the Later Fathers (London: SCM, 1954), p. 185.
149
For biographical and bibliographical details, see Gregory of Nyssa, The Letters: Introduction,
Translation and Commentary (trans. A. M. Silvas; Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 1–57; A. Meredith, The
Cappadocians (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), pp. 52–97.
118 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

who shoulders a straying sheep;150 like the sun descending to occupy a shadowy
cave, ‘taking up unto himself our filth’;151 like God’s presence enflaming but not
consuming Horeb’s bramble-bush, whose thorns mark its fallen condition; like
Moses’ hand, which became leprous, and his rod, which became a serpent, the
signifier of sin.152 The Pauline pronouncement that Christ ‘became sin’ means
that he ‘unite[d] with himself the sinful human soul’153 and was ‘invested with
our sinful nature’.154 Such language seems unequivocal: the humanity assumed
by Christ was sinful.155

3.4.1 Srawley’s thesis

Was this humanity transformed into a sinless and unfallen state at the moment
of the virginal conception? In an important article,156 J. H. Srawley draws this
conclusion after surveying some of the above texts and noting that they may refer
to the humanity assumed by Christ prior to his assumption of it. In addition,
Srawley reviews positive statements from Nyssen regarding the utter sinlessness
of Christ’s humanity, a sinlessness extending past the mere non-commission of

150
C. Eunom. 2.13; 12.1; Antirrh. adv. Apol. 16. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of C. Eunom. are
from NPNF2 5 and all citations of Antirrh. adv. Apol. are from PG 45.
151
Antirrh. adv. Apol. 26; ET mine. J. Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical
Background and Theological Significance (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 192–3, notes that Nyssen’s mentor
Origen employed a Christological adaptation of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Republic, 518a). Nyssen
follows suit. Cf. F. M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), p. 117.
152
Vit. Moys. 2.26-34. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of Vit. Moys. are from Gregory of Nyssa, The
Life of Moses (trans. A. J. Malherbe and E. Ferguson; New York: Paulist, 1978). On p. 170, n. 118,
the translators document Nyssen’s use of thorns as types of sins, temptations, demons, and Christ’s
humanity. If the former three types relate to the Fall, then the latter one likely does as well. Cf. Gen.
3.17–18 for the link between thorns and the Fall.
153
Antirrh. adv. Apol. 23 (ET mine).
154
Vit. Moys. 2.32; ET Life of Moses, p. 62.
155
Torrance, Trinitarian Faith, pp. 162, 164; Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 351; Nantomah, ‘Jesus the
God-Man’, pp. 333–4; Dorries, Incarnational Christology, p. 184; Johnson, Humanity, pp. 130–2; A.
Meredith, Gregory of Nyssa (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 48. By contrast, L. F. Mateo-Seco, Estudios
Sobre La Cristologia de San Gregorio de Nisa (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 1978),
pp. 429–33, holds that Christ assumed immaculate human nature from an immaculate mother, but
does not address the above passages. Nyssen does speak of Mary as ‘immaculate’ (ἀμιάντου) in
Antirrh. adv. Apol. 6 (PG 45, p. 1136c). This may simply mean that Mary’s virginity was unspoilt or
that she did not experience the sinful libido that attends fallen human copulation (Or. cat. 16); cf.
Estudios, pp. 124–5; Mateo-Seco, ‘Ὁ εὔκαιρος θάνατος. Consideraciones en torno a la muerte en las
Homilias al Eclesiastes de Gregorio de Nisa’, in Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes: an English
Version with Supporting Studies: Proceedings of the Seventh International Colloquium on Gregory of
Nyssa (St. Andrews, 5-10 September 1990) (ed. S. G. Hall; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), pp. 277–
97 (291). In Hom. Eccl. 7, Nyssen insists that Christ alone never sinned; no additional exception is
made for Mary. In her case, Mateo-Seco, Estudios, pp. 429–33, conflates commitment to sinlessness
with its attainment.
156
J. H. Srawley, ‘St Gregory of Nyssa on the Sinlessness of Christ’, JTS 7.27 (1906), pp. 434–41.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 119

actual sin,157 for Nyssen quotes Heb. 4.15 and 1 Pet. 2.22/Isa. 53.9 in support of
the claim that Christ had no sinful desires.158 Srawley finds in Nyssen’s Epistle
to Eustathia a clear statement that Christ’s humanity was transformed into a
sinless state immediately upon his conception, while the complete deification
of his humanity awaits his post-Easter state, as Nyssen elsewhere indicates.159
Srawley’s analysis is incisive, but his claim that Christ’s ‘human nature,
when once assumed, did not continue in its fallen state’160 does not account
for Nyssen’s imagery in De Vita Moysis. There the burning bush does not shed
its postlapsarian thorns upon being indwelt by God. There too the cleansing
of Moses’ hand from leprosy and the reversion of his serpent into a rod do
not typify Christ’s conception but his Resurrection and Ascension. It would
seem that in some sense he bears fallenness and remains ‘sinful’ throughout
his earthly career.

3.4.2 A response to Srawley

The interpretative key lies in Nyssen’s complex anthropology.161 For him, essential
human nature is that which reflects in us God’s attributes. Inasmuch as God is
incorporeal, the human body is not essential to human nature; nevertheless,
the body is original to the human creation and will endure into eternity in its
resurrected form. Beyond these original components of God-reflective soul

157
‘St Gregory’, p. 436 (citing Antirrh. adv. Apol. 54), 437 (citing Or. cat., 16).
158
‘St Gregory’, pp. 436–7, quoting C. Eunom., 6.3. D. F. Stramara Jr., ‘The Sinlessness and Moral
Integrity of Jesus according to Gregory of Nyssa’, Patristic and Byzantine Review 24.1–3 (2006), pp.
67–83 (74–5), takes issue with Srawley but may give English terms like ‘tendency’ and ‘propensity’ a
weaker sense than Srawley intends.
159
‘St Gregory’, pp. 437–8, 440, quoting Ep. Eust. on Christ’s conception; 440, citing C. Eunom., 6; Ep.
Theoph.; and Antirrh. adv. Apol. 53 on Christ’s glorified state.
160
‘St Gregory’, p. 435. ‘Nor have I been able to find a single passage in Gregory’s writings which clearly
states that he regarded the humanity assumed by Christ as subject, subsequent to His birth, to the
consequences of the Fall’ (435–6). Yet Srawley grants that Nyssen ascribes ‘human weakness’ to
Christ in the form of dread of death in Gethsemane (436). Consonant with the modern unfallenness
view, Srawley equates fallenness with sinfulness.
161
This paragraph relies on H. Boersma, Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa: An Anagogical
Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), ch. 3; P. C. Bouteneff, ‘Essential or Existential:
The Problem of the Body in the Anthropology of St Gregory of Nyssa’, in Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies
on the Beatitudes: An English Version with Commentary and Supporting Studies. Proceedings of the
Eighth International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Paderborn, 14–18 September 1998) (ed. H.
R. Drobner and A. Viciano; Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 409–19; Hardy and Richardson, Christology,
pp. 239–40; J. Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in
the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 88, 191,
277–8, 290–5; G. B. Ladner, ‘The Philosophical Anthropology of St. Gregory of Nyssa’, Dumbarton
Oaks Papers 12 (1958), pp. 59–94. Cited 7 June 2013. Online: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291117;
J. Daniélou, Platonisme et Théologie mystique: doctrine spirituelle de Saint Grégoire de Nysse (Paris:
Aubier, 2nd edn, 1944), pp. 46–64, 72.
120 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

and attendant body, Nyssen locates sexuality, which he believes God added to
primal human nature due to his foreknowledge of the Fall. Following the Fall,
Adam, Eve, and all their descendants were clothed in ‘garments of skin’, which
typify the body’s envelopment by the flesh with its πάθη162 and mortality. Evil,
too, became intermingled with human nature.163 Yet Nyssen is careful to stress
that the components of human nature are not intrinsically evil. Against the
heretics, he insists that the sinless Christ assumed a human mind, for ‘the
mind … is not sin’.164 Likewise, Christ took a passible human body. Nyssen
distinguishes between two senses of the term πάθος. In its loose sense, the
term refers simply to any natural, morally neutral biological ἔργον165 such as
birth, growth, hunger, weariness, suffering, death, and physical corruption.
There is nothing unbecoming about the impassible God passing through
such experiences in his incarnate state, en route to overcoming them in his
resurrection. The strict sense of πάθος applies solely to a sinful passion such
as greed or lust.166 Nyssen denies that Christ experienced any πάθη of this
latter variety.167 Although tempted in all points as we are, he was without sin

162
Richardson comments, ‘No English word can adequately render pathos, which has several nuances.
Gregory regards its primary sense as moral’ (Hardy and Richardson, Christology, p. 292, n. 22).
Unfortunately, Richardson restricts both the term’s nuances and its moral sense by translating it
everywhere in Or. cat. as ‘weakness’. In Grégoire de Nysse, Discours Catéchétique (trans. R. Winling;
SC 453; Paris: Cerf, 2000), p. 75, Winling notes the difficulty of translating the term into French and
leaves it untranslated. In Estudios, p. 112, n. 73, Mateo-Seco helpfully observes,
Nyssen uses this term in a double sense: passion in the philosophical sense corresponding to the
action-passion binomial and as passion corresponding to pleasure. [J. H.] Srawley comments [in
The Catechetical Oration of Gregory of Nyssa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1956)]: ‘As
applied to birth the πάθος to which he refers [in Or. cat. 13] is properly the πάθος of the parent
(ἡδονή) and denotes passion [.] As applied to death it implies imperfection, frailty, weakness,
exhibited in the submission to φθορά.’ (o.c., p. 60, nt. 5) [ET mine]
Stramara, ‘Sinlessness’, p. 69, sees the term as encompassing ‘the experiences which one has,
whether resulting from external or internal causes’. Cf. Daniélou, Platonisme, pp. 46, 71–2; J. W.
Smith, Passion and Paradise: Human and Divine Emotion in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa (New
York: Crossroad, 2004), chs 3, 7; K. Corrigan, Evagrius and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in the 4th
Century (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 136–45.
163
Hom. op. 16–20; Or. cat. 8; Vit. Moys. 2.22. On the Origenist origin of Nyssen’s interpretation of the
‘garments of skin’, see L. R. Hennessey, ‘Gregory of Nyssa’s Doctrine of the Resurrected Body’, StPatr
22, pp. 28–34. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of Hom. op. are from NPNF2 5 and all citations of
Or. cat. are from Hardy and Richardson, Christology.
164
Antirrh. adv. Apol. 11. Cf. ‘The soul is not sin’ (C. Eunom., 2.13). ET mine.
165
Or. cat. 16 (SC 453, p. 222).
166
Hom. Eccles. 7. According to Daniélou, Platonisme, p. 46, in the strict sense, ‘πάθη designates
the collection of human sinful tendencies. They correspond very exactly with what our modern
language calls the “deadly sins”’ (ET mine). In Or. cat. 16, Nyssen uses ὁρμή and ἡδονή as synonyms
for sinful πάθος (SC 453, p. 224). On ὁρμή as ‘compulsion’, see Stramara, ‘Sinlessness’, pp. 74–5.
167
C. Eunom., 6.3 (PG 45, pp. 721–4); Ep. Eust. (NPNF2 5, pp. 1026–8); Or. cat., 16 (SC 453, pp. 222,
224); cf. 7, 9, 13, 15, 28. Daniélou, Platonisme, p. 71, claims that it was the particular case of the
Incarnation which required Nyssen to distinguish the two senses of πάθη.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 121

(Heb. 4.15), whether original168 or actual; the Evil One could find nothing in
him (Jn 14.30).169 Srawley underscores Nyssen’s distinction between the loose
and strict senses of πάθος170 but leaves unmentioned the fact that for Gregory,
even πάθη, in the loose sense, are due to the Fall. Thus birth, suffering, and such
are fallen (and sexuality itself proleptically is fallen), hence sin-consequent
although not properly sin.
This distinction illuminates Nyssen’s otherwise seemingly contradictory
comments in De Vita Moysis on the word picture of Christ as a serpent. On
the one hand, Gregory links Exod. 4.2-4 with 2 Cor. 5.21: ‘By becoming sin he
became also a serpent, which is nothing other than sin.’171 On the other hand,
Nyssen writes of the bronze serpent (Num. 21.5-9) as a type of Christ, ‘This
figure is a likeness [ὁμοίωμα] of a serpent and not a serpent itself, as the great
Paul himself says, in the likeness [ὁμοίωμα] of sinful flesh. Sin is the real serpent,
and whoever deserts to sin takes on the nature of the serpent.’172 In the former
case, the context is Christ’s ‘being invested with our sinful nature’;173 in the
latter, the serpentine image of Christ saves believers from venomous serpents,
which embody evil desires (πονηρᾶς ἐπιθυμίας).174 Thus for Nyssen, Christ
bears a ‘sinful’ nature but not sinning πάθη. His humanity is termed ‘sinful’
because it suffers sin’s consequences of biological neediness and mortality, not
because it experiences sin itself in the form of depraved desire.
Gregory assures his readers that Christ is not polluted by assuming our
filth,175 nor is Heaven’s Physician made ill by treating our disease.176 His
conception is unstained by libidinous πάθος, the conduit of original sin, even
though he undergoes the πάθος of birth. His life is undefiled by wrongful πάθη

168
In Antirrh. adv. Apol. 11 and C. Eunom. 2.13, quoted above, Nyssen’s assertion that the mind/soul is
not sin follows his quotation of Heb. 4.15 and expounds that verse’s χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας, which Nyssen
evidently understands to refer to ontological, not merely functional, sinlessness. Note that Antirrh.
adv. Apol. opposes Apollinaris, who taught the ontological depravity of the human mind. For Nyssen’s
view of original sin, cf. Tennant, Sources, pp. 321–2; Williams, Ideas, pp. 278–9; Kelly, Early Christian
Doctrines, pp. 348–52; Srawley, ‘St Gregory’, p. 436; E. V. McClear, ‘The Fall of Man and Original Sin in
the Theology of Gregory of Nyssa’, TS 9 (1948), pp. 175–212; Mateo-Seco, Estudios, pp. 124–5, ch. 3.
169
Hom. Eccl. 7.
170
Srawley, ‘St Gregory’, pp. 436–7.
171
Vit. Moys. 2.33; ET Life of Moses, p. 62.
172
Vit. Moys. 2.275; ET Life of Moses, p. 124; Greek: PG 44, pp. 413d, 416a. Note that Nyssen interprets
ὁμοίωμα to mean similiarity, not identity, between the likeness and the likened.
173
Vit. Moys. 2.33; ET Life of Moses, p. 62.
174
Vit. Moys. 2.275 (Greek: PG 44, p. 413d); cf. 2.276. On Nyssen’s use of animals to typify πάθη, cf.
Daniélou, Platonisme, pp. 73–9.
175
Antirrh. adv. Apol. 26; cf. C. Eunom. 6.2.
176
C. Eunom. 6.3; 10.4; Or. cat. 16.
122 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

even as he endures the πάθος of temptation. His suffering of the πάθος of death
ends not in decomposition but in resurrection and immortality.177 In all these
ways, Nyssen sees divine incorruption and impassibility echoed provisionally
in Christ’s earthly existence. In the Resurrection and Ascension, the process
of deification culminates in his own human nature and becomes available
for all other humans to begin to experience. Rather than Christ’s becoming
contaminated in sharing human nature, his deification of it in himself is the
prototype for what he makes available to believers – although the process may
take much longer for them than for him.178
Nyssen makes explicit that Christ took human nature in its fallen and sinful
condition. The very assumption of this nature so purified it as to exclude sinful
passions from Christ’s human experience. Yet throughout ‘the days of his
flesh’, Christ’s humanity was ‘sinful’ (ἁμαρτικήν) in an imprecise sense due to
his enduring the Fall’s effects. A related paradoxical paradigm appears in the
thought of the final Greek father covered by this study, Cyril of Alexandria.

3.5 ‘Seal of the Fathers’: Cyril of Alexandria

With good reason, future generations awarded Cyril (378–444), patriarch of

Alexandria and scourge of Nestorianism,179 the title, ‘Seal of the Fathers’.180
He drew his Christology from Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, and perhaps
Irenaeus,181 and supported it by appeal to various patristic authorities, including
Ambrose and Gregory Nyssen.182 His doctrine found ecumenical vindication

177
Or. cat. 13, 15-16, 23, 27-28 (SC 453). Cf. Mateo-Seco, Estudios, pp. 112, n. 73, 114, 122–5.
178
For example, C. Eunom. 5.5; Or. cat. 24-26, 35. Cf. Srawley, ‘St Gregory’, pp. 440–1; Meredith, Gregory
of Nyssa, p. 48; B. Daley, ‘“Heavenly Man” and “Eternal Christ”: Apollinarius and Gregory of Nyssa
on the Personal Identity of the Savior’, JECS 10.4 (2002), pp. 469–88. Like Athanasius, Nyssen is
misrepresented by Beeley, Unity of Christ, pp. 199–221.
179
For biographical details, see Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters, pp. xi–xliii; idem, On the Unity of
Christ, pp. 9–32; N. Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 1–58.
180
L. Koen, The Saving Passion: Incarnational and Soteriological Thought in Cyril of Alexandria’s
Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1991), p. 19.
181
R. L. Wilken, Judaism and the Early Christian Mind: A Study of Cyril of Alexandria’s Exegesis and
Theology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. 129–30, n. 24; 130–1; S. A. McKinion,
Words, Imagery, and the Mystery of Christ: A Reconstruction of Cyril of Alexandria’s Christology
(Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 17–18; Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, pp. 5; 18; Koen, Saving Passion, pp.
18, 25; Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 322; but cf. D. A. Keating, The Appropriation of Divine Life
in Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, repr. 2005), p. 199, n. 24, who finds no
indication that Cyril read Irenaeus.
182
Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 219, n. 89; Cyril pioneered the practice of appealing to earlier fathers
to establish doctrine (Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 50; Cyril, On the Unity of Christ, p. 11).
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 123

at the Council of Ephesus (431), over which he presided, and subsequently at

the Council of Chalcedon (451).183

3.5.1 Christ’s ‘fallen body’

According to Cyril, unfallen Adam’s flesh had physical desires (e.g. for food)
but he was their absolute master. It had the natural potential to disintegrate, but
the presence of the Holy Spirit preserved it incorruptible. Adam’s transgression
inflicted upon himself and his descendants the contagion of death, corruption,
and the ‘law of sin’ – disorderly desires which lure towards wrongdoing.184
This is the condition of the human nature which Christ assumed. Cyril
writes of ‘having the fallen body [τοῦ προσπεσόντος σώματος] united in an
ineffable manner with the Word that endows all things with life’.185 Again, he
asserts that ‘it was vital for the Word of God … to make human flesh, subject
to decay [τῇ φθορᾷ] and infected with sensuality [τὸ φιλήδονον] as it was, his
own’.186 Nor was this ‘fallen body’, this infected flesh, soulless, but possessed a
human soul subject to distress, hence conditioned by the Fall. Christ must have
taken a complete, postlapsarian psychosomatic unit, Cyril insists, ‘for what is
not assumed, neither is saved [ὅ γὰρ μὴ προσείληπται, οὐδὲ σέσωσται]’.187

3.5.2 Christ’s life-giving flesh

From conception, the union of the life-giving, sinless Logos with fallen human
nature wrought the latter’s deification: his flesh became life-giving and the ‘law

183
Cyril, Select Letters, p. xxxix; Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 50.
184
First Letter to Succensus 9 (Select Letters, pp. 78–9 [Greek on all even-numbered pages and ET on all
odd-numbered pages hereafter cited from this source]); On the Unity of Christ, p. 64; In Romanos,
Rom. 5.18-19, quoted in Burghardt, Image of God, p. 152; Doctrinal Questions and Answers 6 (Select
Letters, pp. 200–5). In the latter two passages, Cyril explicitly denies that Adam’s descendants sinned
along with him; rather, all inherit the penalty of death which fell upon Adam. For further on Cyril’s
doctrine of original sin, cf. Burghardt, Image of God, pp. 153–4, esp. n. 69; Koen, Saving Passion,
p. 43; Bray, ‘Original Sin’, p. 46; F. Young, ‘Theotokos: Mary and the Pattern of Fall and Redemption
in the Theology of Cyril of Alexandria’, and D. A. Keating, ‘Divinization in Cyril: The Appropriation
of Divine Life’, both in Theology of St. Cyril, pp. 55–74 and pp. 149–87 (152–7), respectively.
185
In Jo. Ev., Jn 1.14; ET Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 105; Greek: PG 73, p. 160c. Cf. Young, ‘Theotokos’,
p. 66. PGL, p. 1181, gives a truncated account of προσπίπτω as ‘fall before in supplication’ and does
not list Cyril’s use of this term. More helpful is the same entry in A Greek-English Lexicon (ed. H. G.
Liddell and R. Scott; Oxford: Clarendon, 9th edn, repr. 1976), p. 1523, which includes the definition
‘prostrate oneself’ (italics original). Liddell and Scott’s definition shows that the verb can be reflexive.
186
First Letter to Succensus 9 (Select Letters, pp. 78–9).
187
In Jo. Ev., Jn 1.14; ET mine; Greek: PG 74, p. 89cd. Cf. Inc. unigen. (PG 75, p. 1388bc); Quod unus sit
Christus (PG 75, p. 1332); McKinion, Words, pp. 149–79; L. J. Welch, Christology and Eucharist in
the Early Thought of Cyril of Alexandria (San Francisco: Catholic Scholars Press, 1994), ch. 2.
124 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

of sin’ within it was nullified.188 Cyril follows his predecessors in describing

deification as a dynamic, lifelong process:189 from childhood onward, Christ
advanced in human wisdom, stature, and obedience although as deity
he was perfect;190 in his baptism, he humanly received sanctification and
divinely sanctified the waters;191 in his ministry, he hungered as a man but fed
multitudes as God;192 in the Olivet Discourse, he confessed earthly ignorance
of the Parousia yet retained heavenly omniscience;193 in Gethsemane, he
allowed his flesh to express its natural fear, then converted it into submission
to his Father’s will before fear ripened into cowardice;194 in his crucifixion,
he suffered in the flesh even as he remained impassible in Godhead;195 in the
Resurrection, his mortal remains were raised while his immortal power did
the raising.196 Against Nestorius’ overemphasis on such distinctions, though,
Cyril stresses the interpenetration of human and divine attributes in the
one person of Christ. Thus miraculous power came from Jesus’ divinity but
was displayed through his human touch;197 conversely, to be born or suffer
is proper to human, not divine, nature, yet such creaturely experiences were
truly attributable to the impassible Logos.198
Within that theanthropic union, there was no sin in Christ’s flesh which
could be attributed to his divine Person. We all inherit the guilt and death

188
Adv. Nestorium 4.5 (ET Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes Against Nestorius [trans. P. E. Pusey; LFC 47;
Oxford: James Parker & Co., 1881], pp. 9–12. Cited 2 September 2012. Online: http://www. elpenor.
org/cyril-alexandria/against-nestorius.asp). Unless otherwise noted, all citations of Adv. Nestorium
are from this source. Cf. First Letter to Succensus 9 (Select Letters, pp. 78–9); Quod unus sit Christus
(PG 75, p. 1272).
189
Keating, ‘Divinization’, p. 184.
190
In Jo. Ev., Jn 1.15; Adv. Nestorium 3.4; Inc. unigen. 13, 34. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of In Jo.
Ev. are from Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, and all citations of Inc. unigen. are from Cyril of Alexandria,
Scholia on the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten (trans. P. E. Pusey; LFC 47). Cited 1 September 2012.
Online: http://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/incarnation-only-begotten.asp.
191
Adv. Nestorium 4.2; Inc. unigen. 34; On the Unity of Christ, 100. Cf. Wilken, Judaism, pp. 127–41;
Keating, ‘Divinization’, pp. 152–7.
192
Adv. Nestorium 5.3.
193
Tiberius 4 (Select Letters pp. 150–3; note well 153, n. 29).
194
In Jo. Ev., Jn 6.38, 39; 12.27; Adv. Nestorium 5.3; On the Unity of Christ, pp. 102–4.
195
Adv. Nestorium 1.proem; Expl. XII cap. on Anathema 12; Inc. unigen. 34. Unless otherwise noted, all
citations of Expl. XII cap. are from Russell, Cyril of Alexandria.
196
Inc. unigen. 34.
197
In Jo. Ev., Jn 6.53.
198
On the Unity of Christ, pp. 107–10. On Cyril’s view of the theanthropic union, cf. R. Kearsley, ‘The
Impact of Greek Concepts of God on the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria’, Tyndale Bulletin 43.2
(1992), pp. 307–29; J. M. Hallman, ‘The Seed of Fire: Divine Suffering in the Christology of Cyril of
Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople’, JECS 5 (1997), pp. 369–91; J. J. O’Keefe, ‘Impassible
Suffering? Divine Passion and Fifth-Century Christology’, TS 58 (1997), pp. 39–60; D. Fairbairn,
Grace and Christology in the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), chs 3–4. For an
overview of Nestorius and the Nestorian controversy, see Young, From Nicaea, pp. 213–40.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 125

penalty for Adam’s original act of sin, but Christ undid that guilt in himself
through his career of flawless obedience. Never was he guilty of Adam’s
transgression: neither Satan nor the Jews could find sin (including Adamic sin)
in him (Jn 8.46; 14.30; 1 Pet. 2.22).199 Cyril does speak of sensual desires as
‘the law of sin,’ but he describes Christ as ‘curb[ing] the innate, the sensual
impulses’ within his own flesh so that it ‘ceased to be infected with sensuality’.200
Cyril specifically denies that Christ’s fleshly fear, ignorance, hunger, and other
infirmities were sinful.201 One of the Alexandrian’s dozen anathemas is directed
against Nestorius’ claim that Christ offered his sacrifice for himself as well as for
others; to Cyril, such a claim blasphemously insinuates that Christ was sinful.202
This principle of the separation of Christ from sin echoes in Cyril’s exegesis.
His relation of Rom. 8.3 and 2 Cor. 5.21 to the prophecy that the Isaianic
Servant would be ‘numbered among the transgressors’ (Isa. 53.12)203 indicates
that ‘the likeness of the flesh of sin’ and ‘became sin’ describe the imputation
of sin to Christ. Cyril stresses that Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh,
not in sinful flesh itself. The latter would mean that Christ was a sinner, a
notion which Cyril repudiates with a Paul-like μὴ γένοιτο!204 The former
means that Christ came in the appearance of a sinner due to his becoming a
human being, all the rest of whom were sinners. Moses’ rod which became a
serpent, his hand which turned leprous, and the bronze serpent all typify this
same truth.205 Even Christ’s so-called cry of dereliction was really an appeal to

199
Tiberius 13; Adv. Nestorium 1.1; 3.5.
200
First Letter to Succensus 9 (Select Letters, p. 79); cf. Tiberius 12 (Select Letters, pp. 170–1). As
Kearsley, ‘Greek Concepts’, pp. 320–1, points out, Cyril links passibility with the possibility of sin
and so stresses the impassibility of the divine Logos as the ground of the sinlessness of the flesh
hypostatically united to it.
201
In Jo. Ev., Jn 12.27; Tiberius 4 (Select Letters, 150–3); Tiberius 9 rules that Christ endured hunger,
weariness, ‘sleep, anxiety, pain and other innocent human experiences’ (ἀνθρωπίνων καὶ ἀδιαβλήτων
παθῶν) (Select Letters, pp. 78–9).
202
Third Letter to Nestorius 9 (Select Letters, pp. 26–7); Expl. XII cap. on Anathema 10; Adv. Nestorium 3.5.
Cf. Wilken, Judaism, pp. 210, 217–18. Nestorius later explained himself in The Bazaar of Heracleides
(ed. and trans. G. R. Driver and L. Hodgson; repr. New York: AMS Press, 1978), pp. 249–51: Christ
sacrificed for himself to increase his merit, not to expiate any demerit. Bathrellos, ‘Sinlessness’, pp.
115–16, has renewed the charge that Nestorius’ Christ was sinful, citing the assertion in Bazaar,
p. 63, that Christ ‘took a nature which had sinned’ with its ‘anger and concupiscence and thoughts’
(cf. 211). The first quotation merely echoes the sentiments of fathers from Irenaeus through Cyril
himself, as this chapter has documented. The second quotation recalls Plato’s tripartite soul with
its irascible, concupiscible, and rational elements. Chapter 4.1.1 of this study shows that Tertullian,
like Nestorius, attributes sinless anger, concupiscence, and reasoning to Christ. Nestorius insists on
Christ’s human sinlessness in nature and act (pp. 32–3, 62–8, 72–5, 172–3, 212–13, 247, 251).
203
Inc. unigen. 16; Quod unus sit Christus. ET On the Unity of Christ, pp. 56, 61.
204
In Romanos 8:3 (PG 74, p. 820a); Quod unus sit Christus (PG 75, p. 1305c).
205
Inc. unigen. 15, 16; Adv. Nestorium 4. proem.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 125

penalty for Adam’s original act of sin, but Christ undid that guilt in himself
through his career of flawless obedience. Never was he guilty of Adam’s
transgression: neither Satan nor the Jews could find sin (including Adamic sin)
in him (Jn 8.46; 14.30; 1 Pet. 2.22).199 Cyril does speak of sensual desires as
‘the law of sin,’ but he describes Christ as ‘curb[ing] the innate, the sensual
impulses’ within his own flesh so that it ‘ceased to be infected with sensuality’.200
Cyril specifically denies that Christ’s fleshly fear, ignorance, hunger, and other
infirmities were sinful.201 One of the Alexandrian’s dozen anathemas is directed
against Nestorius’ claim that Christ offered his sacrifice for himself as well as for
others; to Cyril, such a claim blasphemously insinuates that Christ was sinful.202
This principle of the separation of Christ from sin echoes in Cyril’s exegesis.
His relation of Rom. 8.3 and 2 Cor. 5.21 to the prophecy that the Isaianic
Servant would be ‘numbered among the transgressors’ (Isa. 53.12)203 indicates
that ‘the likeness of the flesh of sin’ and ‘became sin’ describe the imputation
of sin to Christ. Cyril stresses that Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh,
not in sinful flesh itself. The latter would mean that Christ was a sinner, a
notion which Cyril repudiates with a Paul-like μὴ γένοιτο!204 The former
means that Christ came in the appearance of a sinner due to his becoming a
human being, all the rest of whom were sinners. Moses’ rod which became a
serpent, his hand which turned leprous, and the bronze serpent all typify this
same truth.205 Even Christ’s so-called cry of dereliction was really an appeal to

199
Tiberius 13; Adv. Nestorium 1.1; 3.5.
200
First Letter to Succensus 9 (Select Letters, p. 79); cf. Tiberius 12 (Select Letters, pp. 170–1). As
Kearsley, ‘Greek Concepts’, pp. 320–1, points out, Cyril links passibility with the possibility of sin
and so stresses the impassibility of the divine Logos as the ground of the sinlessness of the flesh
hypostatically united to it.
201
In Jo. Ev., Jn 12.27; Tiberius 4 (Select Letters, 150–3); Tiberius 9 rules that Christ endured hunger,
weariness, ‘sleep, anxiety, pain and other innocent human experiences’ (ἀνθρωπίνων καὶ ἀδιαβλήτων
παθῶν) (Select Letters, pp. 78–9).
202
Third Letter to Nestorius 9 (Select Letters, pp. 26–7); Expl. XII cap. on Anathema 10; Adv. Nestorium 3.5.
Cf. Wilken, Judaism, pp. 210, 217–18. Nestorius later explained himself in The Bazaar of Heracleides
(ed. and trans. G. R. Driver and L. Hodgson; repr. New York: AMS Press, 1978), pp. 249–51: Christ
sacrificed for himself to increase his merit, not to expiate any demerit. Bathrellos, ‘Sinlessness’, pp.
115–16, has renewed the charge that Nestorius’ Christ was sinful, citing the assertion in Bazaar,
p. 63, that Christ ‘took a nature which had sinned’ with its ‘anger and concupiscence and thoughts’
(cf. 211). The first quotation merely echoes the sentiments of fathers from Irenaeus through Cyril
himself, as this chapter has documented. The second quotation recalls Plato’s tripartite soul with
its irascible, concupiscible, and rational elements. Chapter 4.1.1 of this study shows that Tertullian,
like Nestorius, attributes sinless anger, concupiscence, and reasoning to Christ. Nestorius insists on
Christ’s human sinlessness in nature and act (pp. 32–3, 62–8, 72–5, 172–3, 212–13, 247, 251).
203
Inc. unigen. 16; Quod unus sit Christus. ET On the Unity of Christ, pp. 56, 61.
204
In Romanos 8:3 (PG 74, p. 820a); Quod unus sit Christus (PG 75, p. 1305c).
205
Inc. unigen. 15, 16; Adv. Nestorium 4. proem.
126 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

God to end his long abandonment of human nature, for now in the Second
Adam is found ‘the nature of man made clean, its faults corrected, made holy
and pure’. On this basis, then, he entreats his Father to grant grace to all whose
nature still languishes under sin.206 Cyril thus rehearses themes found in the
earlier Greek fathers.

Conclusion

This chapter has examined the thought of five Greek fathers (or more, if indeed
some of Athanasius’ works are pseudonymous) to whom modern proponents
of both the fallenness and unfallenness views appeal. At the terminological
level, the results are complex. Our study has shown that the fallenness camp
has patristic precedent for its attribution of the terms ‘fallen’ (Irenaeus, Cyril)207
and ‘sinful’ (Nyssen) to Christ’s humanity. Yet unfallenness advocates may find
consolation in Irenaeus’ denial that Christ’s humanity ‘fell’ into sin; in Irenaeus’
and Contra Apollinarium’s use of prelapsarian imagery for Christ’s human
origins and innocence; and in the fathers’ general insistence on his sinlessness.
Their ability both to apply and to deny the same language to Christ demands
that we move to the conceptual level in order to understand their perspective.
The fathers view the Logos as taking a human nature which otherwise exists
in a condition of captivity to sin and mortality. In the virginal conception, he
heals and hallows it so that it is freed from domination by Satan and death,
from sinful passions, and, for those fathers who believe in it, from original
guilt. Nevertheless, throughout his earthly life Christ bears the consequences
of sin by being reckoned guilty, suffering various infirmities, and dying,
then brings human nature in himself into the impassibility, immortality, and
incorruptibility of the resurrection.
The status of the sinless πάθη which exist in Christ is variously assessed by
the fathers. For Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Cyril, fleshly desires were part of

206
Quod unus sit Christus. ET On the Unity of Christ, pp. 105–6 (quotation from latter page). Cf.
Adv. Nestorium 5.4; W. J. Jennings, ‘Undoing Our Abandonment: Reading Scripture through the
Sinlessness of Jesus. A Meditation on Cyril of Alexandria’s On the Unity of Christ’, Ex Auditu 14
(1998), pp. 85–96.
207
Both use forms of πίπτω. Williams, Ideas, pp. 252–3, 275–6, notes that the noun πτῶμα later became
the standard Greek designation for the Fall.
 The Greek Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 127

humanity’s original state but were completely submissive to reason (and, for
Cyril, to the Holy Spirit). Nazianzen agrees that they were original to human
nature but portrays them as unruly even in Eden. Nyssen, though, denies that
they existed before the Fall. For him, even birth is a fallen function. All the
fathers, though, see Christ as overcoming temptations related to these fleshly
desires, thereby conforming them to the will of God.
Except for their diversity of views regarding sinless πάθη, the Greek fathers
concur on the relationship of the Fall to Christ’s humanity. Do the Latin
fathers? To that question we now turn.
128
 4

The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or

Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity

The preceding chapter explored the Greek fathers’ views relative to the
fallenness debate. In the present chapter, we shift attention to the Latin fathers
to survey their opinions on the same subject. In particular, we look to the
five fathers most-often referenced in the modern debate: Tertullian, Hilary of
Poitiers, Ambrose, Augustine, and Leo the Great.

4.1 Pioneer in the West: Tertullian

The West’s indigenous theology began in Carthage with Tertullian (fl. ca.
195–212), who was himself heavily influenced by Irenaeus. A convert from
paganism to Christianity, Tertullian became a pugnacious polemicist for his
new faith, deploying a full arsenal of rhetorical techniques against a variety
of opponents, whether pagans, Jews, heretics, or fellow Catholics. Although
he wrote in both Greek and Latin, only his works in the latter language have
survived. In them he pioneered the technical theological terminology used
thereafter in the Western church, even when in later years he was adjudged as
heretical due to his writings’ schismatic tendencies.1

1
For biographical information, cf. E. Ferguson, ‘Tertullian’, in Early Christian Thinkers: The
Lives and Legacies of Twelve Key Figures (ed. P. Foster; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010),
pp. 85–99; G. D. Dunn, Tertullian (London: Routledge, 2004), ch. 1; G. L. Bray, Holiness and the Will
of God: Perspectives on the Theology of Tertullian (Atlanta: John Knox, 1979), ch. 2; T. D. Barnes,
Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). I have used Dunn’s
and Bray’s dating of Tertullian’s life, following Barnes’ revisionist account; Ferguson, ‘Tertullian’,
p. 85, gives more traditional dates of ca. 160–ca. 240. On Tertullian’s ‘massive debt to Irenaeus’,
see E. Osborn, Tertullian, First Theologian of the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997, 2001), p. 7.
130 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Over a third of Tertullian’s extant oeuvre assails Marcionism,2 and it is to

two volumes of this group that fallenness and unfallenness debaters appeal:
Adversus Marcionem and De carne Christi.3 Both date to the last years of
Tertullian’s literary output,4 thus embodying his mature Christology. According
to the Carthaginian, Marcion taught that Christ had merely the appearance
of a body, not true flesh. De carne Christi broadens the scope of Tertullian’s
assault to include Marcion’s former disciple Apelles and the Valentinians. All
these heretics agreed that the material world was inherently, irredeemably evil,
the product of a bad creator. Only the human soul was worthy of salvation
by a Christ who himself was kept as insulated as possible from materiality.5
Clearly, theological anthropology played a dominant role in these heretics’
Christologies, as also in Tertullian’s replies. For this reason, we shall include
coverage of his important work on the subject, De anima (206/7),6 as supplying
context for his view of Christ’s humanity.

4.1.1 Tertullian’s anthropology

Against the heretics, Tertullian insists that the Creator is the one true and good
God, who made the first humans as good, psychosomatically unified beings.
Their souls imaged God through the rational ordering of their emotions
and physical urges. Despite possessing all the knowledge and power needed
to remain obedient to God, they freely chose to heed Satan’s seductions and
thereby inflicted a double bondage on all their offspring from birth onwards:
the external enticements of evil spirits and the internal affliction of a sinful
‘second nature (alia natura)’ with its irrational impulses towards evil. This
sinful nature, however, has not superseded the original, divinely created good

2
R. Cantalamessa, La Cristologia di Tertulliano ([Fribourg, Switzerland]: Edizioni Universitarie
Friburgo Svizzera, 1962), p. 35.
3
Unless otherwise noted, all citations of Marc. and Carn. Chr. and all quotations in both Latin (on
even-numbered pages) and English (on odd-numbered pages) are taken from Tertullian, Adversus
Marcionem (ed. and trans. E. Evans; 2 vols.; Oxford Early Christian Texts; London: Clarendon,
1972) and Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incarnation (ed. and trans. E. Evans; London: SPCK, 1956),
respectively.
4
Dunn, Tertullian, p. 6, dates Marc. to 207/8 and Carn. Chr. to 208–12. Barnes, Tertullian, pp. 47–8,
55, concurs on Marc. but urges 206 for Carn. Chr. Cf. AMOECT 1, pp. xv, xviii.
5
AMOECT 1, pp. xiii, xv; Tertullian’s Treatise, pp. xii–xvii, xxiv–xxxii; A. Viciano, Cristo Salvador y
Liberador del Hombre: Estudio sobre la Soteriología de Tertuliano (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad
de Navarra, 1986), pp. 240–7.
6
Barnes, Tertullian, pp. 47, 55.
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 131

nature; it has only shrouded it. Thus all humanity is a mixture of inherent
goodness and adherent evil.7
It is this sinful human nature which Christ assumed, but in the act of its
assumption he purified it. Against the heretical claim that if Christ took our
flesh, then his flesh must have been sinful, Tertullian rejoins, ‘By clothing
himself with our flesh he made it his own, and by making it his own he
made it non-sinful.’8 The implication is that Mary’s flesh, from whence Christ
derived his humanity,9 was sinful. Tertullian repeats Irenaeus’ typology
whereby the Virgin Mary’s vivifying faith in the angel’s words remedies the
Virgin Eve’s fatal faith in the serpent’s words.10 He also, however, accuses
Mary of unbelief in her Son during his earthly ministry.11 The sinlessness
of Christ’s humanity, then, is due not to his mother but to God’s own
incarnating action. Again like Irenaeus, Tertullian connects the Virgin Birth
with both Adam’s prelapsarian formation from virgin soil and Christians’
regeneration.12 The former parallel indicates how Christ may be fully human
apart from being procreated sexually, and it identifies him as the new, sinless
Adam, the second founder of the human race; it does not, though, imply
that Mary’s flesh existed in an unfallen state, except in the analogous sense of
being virginal. The latter parallel signifies a movement from a postlapsarian
condition of sinful flesh (our own, in Christians’ case; Mary’s, in Christ’s
case) to a new, sin-free life.

7
An. 16, 39–41 (quotation from Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 176, quoting An. 41; unless
otherwise noted, all citations of An. are from ANF 3); Marc. 2.2, 5, 8-9, 16. Cf. Viciano, Cristo
Salvador, pp. 92, 275, 281. Tertullian clearly teaches a doctrine of original sin (Tennant, Sources,
pp. 328–36; Williams, Ideas, pp. 231–45), but does he teach original guilt? Bray thinks so
(Holiness, pp. 81, 88), as does Evans (Tertullian’s Treatise, p. 152); gainsaying them are Williams,
Ideas, pp. 238–41 (but cf. Rondet, Original Sin, p. 52); Ferguson, ‘Tertullian’, p. 91; Kelly, Early
Christian Doctrines, pp. 175–6; Lampe, ‘Christian Theology’, pp. 61, 157; Osborn, Tertullian,
pp. 163–75. Steenberg, Of God and Man, pp. 82–4, speaks of the transmission of intergenerational
guilt via imitation, not imputation. Tertullian’s rhetoric misleads certain interpreters: contrary to
Ferguson, ‘Tertullian’, p. 91, An. 38 does not intend that humans are totally innocent until puberty,
but only that they are innocent of libido. (Cf. Irenaeus’ depiction of the first couple as children.)
On the other hand, Steenberg, Of God and Man, p. 82, inaccurately appeals to Carn. Chr. 4 as proof
that Tertullian teaches that sinful libido in procreation is the means of sin’s transmission. Here
Steenberg’s language betrays that he reads as Tertullian’s own view the Carthaginian’s portrayal of
Marcion’s position! On the need for care in interpreting Tertullian’s rhetoric, see Dunn, Tertullian,
pp. 19–20; Osborn, Tertullian, pp. 8–10.
8
Carn. Chr. 16 in Tertullian’s Treatise, p. 56.
9
Carn. Chr. 17–23.
10
Carn. Chr. 17. Cf. Haer. 3.21.10 (Cantalamessa, Cristologia, p. 69).
11
Carn. Chr. 7.
12
Carn. Chr. 17; 20; cf. 4; An. 40–1. Cf. Viciano, Cristo Salvador, pp. 272, 285–91. For Irenaeus’
statement, see Haer. 4.33.11.
132 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Tertullian holds in creative tension three crucial propositions: the sinful

condition of flesh generally; the sinlessness of Christ’s flesh as a victory over the
former condition; and the continuing reality of the substance of flesh, which is
not abolished in the abolition of its sin. Thus the Carthaginian confesses Christ
as the single sinless human, whose soul experienced anger and concupiscence
(here simply meaning strong desire) without defilement because they were
subject to his rationality,13 ‘neither … [was his flesh] sinful, when in it there
was no guile’.14 Yet the marvel is that he is sinless in the very same flesh as ours:
‘For what would it amount to if it was in a better kind of flesh, of a different
(that is, a non-sinful) nature, that he destroyed the birthmark of sin?’15

4.1.2 Christ’s relation to sin and death

These three propositions interweave in Tertullian’s exegesis of Rom. 8.3. Here
he combats two heretical interpretations: Marcion’s, in which Christ’s coming
‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (in similitudine carnis peccati) means that Christ
has only the appearance of essentially sinful flesh, not its reality; and Alexander
the Valentinian’s, which takes the same Pauline phrase to mean that Christ’s
flesh was exactly like ours in its sinfulness, so that to eradicate its sin he had
to eradicate the very substance of his flesh.16 Tertullian replies that Paul does
not say simply that Christ came in ‘the likeness of flesh’, which might imply
insubstantiality; rather, ‘the likeness of sinful flesh’ means that Christ’s flesh is
consubstantial with ours, but not sinful.17 The ‘sin of the flesh … was brought
to nought18 in Christ, not the material but its quality, not the substance but
its guilt’, for Christ’s flesh ‘is to be equated with Adam in species but not in

13
An. 16, reflecting Plato’s tripartite division of the soul into the irascible, concupiscible, and rational
elements. Tertullian’s Old Latin version of the New Testament used concupiscentia of Jesus’ desire in
Lk. 22.15, a usage later rejected in the Vulgate (Williams, Ideas, p. 244, nn. 1, 3–4).
14
ita nec peccatricem in qua dolus non fuit (Carn. Chr. 16 in Tertullian’s Treatise, pp. 56–7). Like
Irenaeus, Tertullian here adapts 1 Pet. 2.22’s ‘He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in
his mouth’, but whereas Irenaeus replaces ‘mouth’ with ‘soul’, thus moving from the material
instrument to the immaterial source of its speech, Tertullian takes ‘mouth’ as a synecdoche for ‘flesh’:
the antecedent of the above-quoted ‘qua’ is ‘carnem’ (Tertullian’s Treatise, p. 54). For further on
Tertullian’s doctrine of Christ’s sinlessness, see Cantalamessa, Cristologia, pp. 90–2.
15
Carn. Chr. 16 in Tertullian’s Treatise, p. 57.
16
Cf. Cantalamessa, Cristologia, p. 90, on Alexander’s interpretation. Note that Marcion and Alexander
have exactly opposite understandings of the meaning of similitudo/ὁμοίωμα.
17
Marc. 5.14; Carn. Chr. 16.
18
Tertullian substitutes Rom. 6.6’s verb ‘evacuavit’ for Rom. 8.3’s verb ‘damnavit’ (Cantalamessa,
Cristologia, p. 90) or ‘condemnavit,’ apparently confusing the underlying Greek’s κατέκρινεν for
καταργηθῇ (Tertullian’s Treatise, p. 151).
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 133

defect’.19 Furthermore, even if ‘likeness’ were to qualify ‘flesh’, it would suggest

not a difference in substance but a difference in origin due to the Virgin Birth.20
Although Christ’s human nature was free from both original and actual
sin from the womb forward, it remained capable of dying; indeed, the reason
he was born in the flesh was that he might die in it for our salvation.21 At
one point Tertullian sounds as though he associates present salvation from
sin (regeneration) strictly with Christ’s birth and future salvation from death
(resurrection) exclusively with Christ’s death and resurrection: ‘Christ alone
had the right to become incarnate of human flesh, so that he might reform our
nativity by his own nativity, and thus also loose the bands of our death by his
own death, by rising again in that flesh in which he was born with intent to
be able to die.’22 Elsewhere, though, Christ’s birth and death together establish
our regeneration:23

This is the new birth, that man is being born in God, since the day when
God was born in man, taking to himself flesh of the ancient seed without
the agency of the ancient seed, so that he might reshape it with new (that is,
spiritual) seed when he had first by sacrifice expelled its ancient defilements
[antiquitatis sordibus].24

Christ died, Tertullian teaches, as a sacrifice for sin. Yet in so doing, Christ did
not become sinful. In Tertullian’s interpretation of Numbers 21, like other early
exegetes, he typifies the snakebites as sin’s effects and the pole on which the
bronze serpent is mounted as Christ’s curative Cross, but the bronze serpent

19
evacuatam esse in Christo … peccatum carnis, non materiam sed naturam, nec substantiam sed
culpam … genere non vitio Adae aequanda (Carn. Chr. 16 in Tertullian’s Treatise, pp. 56–7; cf. Marc.
5.14). On Tertullian’s use of vitium and culpa to refer to Adam’s original sin, transmitted to his
descendants, see Viciano, Cristo Salvador, pp. 91–2.
20
Marc. 5.14; cf. Carn. Chr. 16.
21
Carn. Chr. 5.
22
Marc. 3.9 in AMOECT 1, p. 197. Lampe, ‘Christian Theology’, p. 61, comments, ‘This “Irenaean”
interpretation of Christ’s saving work is characteristic of the small amount of exposition which
Tertullian devotes to the subject.’
23
Viciano, Cristo Salvador, p. 291, explains that for Tertullian, Christ’s birth commences humanity’s
regeneration, but this renewal is not applied to the rest of the race until after Christ’s death.
24
Carn. Chr. 17 in Tertullian’s Treatise, pp. 58–9. Cantalamessa, Cristologia, p. 67, and Viciano, Cristo
Salvador, pp. 271–2, see ‘antiquitatis sordibus’ as original sin. In Marc. 3.7, Tertullian uses sordidis
to describe Christ’s humanity. Viciano, Cristo Salvador, p. 93, claims that in this case, the term refers
simply to the humility of the Incarnation. Context supports this interpretation: Tertullian applies
Zech. 3.3-5 to Christ, for ‘he is at first clothed in filthy garments [sordidis indutus], which means the
indignity of passible and mortal flesh, when also the devil stands as his adversary …: afterwards he
is divested of his previous foulness [despoliatus pristinas sordes], and arrayed in robe and mitre and
shining crown, which means the glory and dignity of his second coming’ (AMOECT 1, pp. 188–91.
134 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

itself depicts not Christ but the defeated devil.25 Similarly, the Carthaginian
rejects Marcion’s interpretation of Gal. 3.13 as teaching that the Creator cursed
Christ; rather, by being hung on a tree, Christ came under the general curse
previously legislated against all who died in that manner.26 Whether describing
Christ’s death or incarnation, Tertullian places him amid sin and evil but
does not identify him with them; instead, from out of their midst he renders
redemption.
In the fires of strife, Tertullian forged the beginnings of the Western
theological tradition. That tradition would find its greatest exponent two
centuries later in another North African, Augustine of Hippo. Between the two
compatriots come a pair of theologians who move in opposite Christological
directions: Hilary of Poitiers, who takes great pains to stress the Son’s
impassibility, and Ambrose of Milan, who affirms Christ’s condescension in
making our afflictions his own.

4.2 The passionlessness of the Christ: Hilary of Poitiers

The fourth century produced the first systematic theologian to write in Latin,
Hilary of Poitiers (ca. 315–367/8), called ‘the Athanasius of the West’ for his
staunchly pro-Nicene stance on Christ’s deity. Although native to the West and
indebted to Tertullian’s thought, Hilary also knew Greek and was introduced
to the East’s theology during a four-year exile there from his bishopric
(ca. 356–360). He synthesized these influences in his De Trinitate.27 This work’s
Christology is variously assessed in the modern fallenness debate: Irving cites
it without qualification in support of his view; Dods, Bruce, and Weinandy
pillory Hilary as an unfallenness extremist (thus rehearsing a discomfort

25
Marc. 3.18; cf. De idololatria 5; Adversus Judaeos 10 (ANF 3, pp. 63–4, 166, respectively). Cf. Justin,
Dial. 91, 94, 112.
26
Marc. 5.3.
27
For Hilary’s life and influences, see ‘Hilary of Poitiers, St.’ ODCC (2005), n.p. Cited 10 December
2012. Online: http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001/
acref-9780192802903-e-3265; M. Weedman, The Trinitarian Theology of Hilary of Poitiers (Leiden:
Brill, 2007), pp. 25–7, 32, 42; Hanson, Search, pp. 459–72; P. C. Burns, The Christology in Hilary of
Poitiers’ Commentary on Matthew (Rome: Institutum Patristicum ‘Augustinianum’, 1981), pp. 9–33,
37, 44–5, 119; J. W. Jacobs, ‘The Western Roots of the Christology of St. Hilary of Poitiers. A
Heritage of Textual Interpretation’, StPatr 13 (1975): 198–203 (198); G. Morrel, ‘Hilary of Poitiers:
A Theological Bridge Between Christian East and Christian West’, Anglican Theological Review 44.3
(July 1962), pp. 313–16.
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 135

dating back to the fifth century concerning his seeming semi-Docetism);28 and
Torrance finds him ambiguous.29

4.2.1 Defence of Christ’s human impassibility

For his own part, Hilary directly rejects Docetism, insisting that Christ had
a true fleshly body which shed its blood.30 The bishop’s primary opponents,
however, are anti-Nicene heretics who argue that Christ’s creaturely infirmities
of birth, ignorance, hunger, thirst, sorrow, and suffering demonstrate him to be
a lesser being than the perfect, impassible God.31 Hilary seeks to defend Christ’s
identity as one person who is simultaneously truly God and truly human,32
but the bishop depicts the divine attributes of omniscience and impassibility
as nearly reducing Christ’s human limitations to epiphenomena: his hunger,
thirst, and tears, his confession of ignorance and cries from Gethsemane and
Golgotha – all are adaptations to human custom, not expressions of genuine
weakness. They are performed for his disciples’ benefit, not his own.33 Hilary
does concede two points regarding the Passion. First, in Gethsemane, Christ
indeed was distressed, but it was lest his followers fail; his death brought no
foreboding for his own sake.34 Secondly, Christ’s body really suffered pain; his
human soul, however, did not feel that pain.35

28
C. Beckwith, ‘Suffering without Pain: The Scandal of Hilary of Poitiers’ Christology’, Shadow, pp.
71–96 (71–3); K. Madigan, ‘Ancient and High-Medieval Interpretations of Jesus in Gethsemane:
Some Reflections on Tradition and Continuity in Christian Thought’, HTR 88.1 (1995), pp. 157–
73; Weedman, Trinitarian Theology, p. 157; Jacobs, ‘Western Roots’, pp. 202–3, n. 3; J. Mercer,
‘Suffering for Our Sake: Christ and Human Destiny in Hilary of Poitiers’s De Trinitate’, JECS
22.4 (Winter 2014), pp. 541–68 (543). DOI: 10.1353/earl.2014.0048. Cited 15 May 2015. Online:
Academia.edu.
29
Irving: ‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, p. 93; Dods: Incarnation, pp. 519–21; Bruce: Humiliation,
pp. 238–43; Weinandy: Likeness, pp. 23–5; Torrance: Trinitarian Faith, p. 162, n. 54.
30
Trin. 10.41. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of Trin. are taken from Saint Hilary of Poitiers, The
Trinity (trans. S. McKenna; FC 25; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1954).
31
For example, Trin. 2.26; 10.9; Weedman, Trinitarian Theology, p. 167; Mercer, ‘Suffering’, p. 544; but
cf. FC 25, p. xi.
32
For example, Trin. 9.3, 5, 14.
33
Trin. 9.59-75; 10.8, 24, 27-71. Cf. Hanson, Search, pp. 496–502; Jacobs, ‘Western Roots’, p. 202;
Mercer, ‘Suffering’, pp. 559–62.
34
Trin. 10.36-37; cf. 10.55-56; Weedman, Trinitarian Theology, pp. 167–9.
35
Trin. 10.14, 23, 46-7; cf. 10.33, 67. Does Hilary moderate his position in his later writing? L. Casula,
La Cristologia di San Leone Magno: Il Fondamento Dottrinale e Soteriologico (Milan: Glossa, 2000),
pp. 66–7, says yes. L. F. Ladaria, La Cristología de Hilario de Poitiers (Rome: Editrice Pontificia
Università Gregoriana, 1989), pp. 176–7, says no, as does P. C. Burns, Model for the Christian Life:
Hilary of Poitiers’ Commentary on the Psalms (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 2012), pp. 149, 159–64, 231. Cf. the nuanced discussions in P. Limongi, ‘La trasmissione del
peccato originale in S. Ilario di Poitiers’, La Scuola Cattolica 69 (1941), pp. 260–73 (270, n. 38) and
136 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Here Hilary relies upon Stoic psychology,36 which taught that ‘the wise and
good man would be ευδαίμων [sic] on the rack or while being roasted alive
in the brazen bull of Phalaris’.37 This philosophical ideal of a soul rendered
impassible by virtue allegedly characterized Old Testament saints, the apostles,
and Jewish and Christian martyrs; how much more Christ himself, who once
rebuked Peter for attributing fear of death to his Lord!38 As Carl Beckwith
explains, ‘Christ’s humanity, then, is not less human because he suffers without
pain; rather, according to Hilary’s anthropology and moral psychology, he is
more truly human because his soul is properly and perfectly ordered towards
that which is true and good.’39
He is more truly human because he is more than truly human: his deity has
assured his humanity’s perfection from the first. In fallen Adam, humanity
is stained by original sin in body and soul, but Christ did not derive such
a defective human nature from his mother, for he was not conceived in the
ordinary manner. Rather, he himself sanctified her womb, generated a body
for himself from her substance, and created to animate that body a soul not
enfeebled by sin and thus not capable of pain.40 His body itself was so full of

J. J. McMahon, De Christo Mediatore Doctrina Sancti Hilarii Pictavensis (Mundelein, IL: Seminarii
Sanctae Mariae ad Lacum, 1947), pp. 44–8. Limongi sees a distinction in Hilary between the sin-free
and so suffering-free human nature which Christ assumed at conception and the sufferings which
he willingly accepted as part of his redemptive work. Limongi likewise distinguishes between the
sort or measure of passio which Christ accepted and that which he did not. McMahon concludes
that for Hilary, Christ’s infirmities differ from ours in that they are voluntarily assumed, unmerited
by personal sin, subject to his will, and effective over only part of his being (his humanity).
36
Beckwith, ‘Suffering without Pain’, pp. 82–5. Burns, Christology in Hilary, pp. 88–91, 133–4, claims
that Hilary draws from his education in Seneca’s De constantia sapientis; Mercer, ‘Suffering’, pp.
544–6, sees an indirect influence as more likely.
37
A. N. M. Rich, ‘Body and Soul in the Philosophy of Plotinus’, Journal of the History of Philosophy
I (1963), p. 623, quoted in M. R. Miles, Augustine on the Body (n.p.: The American Academy of
Religion, 1979; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009), p. 47.
38
Trin. 10.27, 45–6; Beckwith, ‘Suffering without Pain’, pp. 86–8, 96, n. 74.
39
Beckwith, ‘Suffering without Pain’, p. 86. Cf. Weedman, Trinitarian Theology, p. 157; Ladaria,
Cristología, p. 169. For a strongly sympathetic explanation of Hilary’s position in its polemical and
intellectual context, see Mercer, ‘Suffering’, pp. 541–68.
40
Trin. 2.24 (here ‘Holy Spirit’ refers to the second, not the third, person of the Trinity: cf. 2.30; 9.3, 14,
and FC 25, p. 54 n. 55), 26; 3.19; 9.7; 10.14-26. Cf. Ladaria, Cristología, pp. 94, 169–70; McMahon, De
Christo Mediatore, pp. 41–4, 72–4; Weedman, Trinitarian Theology, 159–61; P. Limongi, ‘Esistenza
e universalità del peccato originale nella mente di S. Ilario di Poitiers’ and idem, ‘La trasmissione’,
La Scuola Cattolica 69 (1941), pp. 127–47 and 260–73, respectively. In ‘La trasmissione’, pp. 271–3,
Limongi argues from silence and by special pleading on the basis of a single text (Hilary’s Tractate
on Ps. 118 [= Ps. 119] gimel 12) that Hilary also excludes the Virgin Mary from infection by original
sin, despite Limongi’s insistence throughout ‘Esistenza’ that Hilary teaches the universality of
original sin (Christ alone excepted) and, throughout the rest of ‘La trasmissione’, that Hilary sees
natural propagation as the mode of its transmission, so that the absence of male seed from Christ’s
conception was essential to preserving him from original sin.
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 137

divine power that it could walk on water and cure others’ infirmities, yet so
accommodated to weakness that it could be pierced and slain.41

4.2.2 Pauline exegesis

The paradoxical status of Christ’s body appears in Hilary’s treatment of
Rom. 8.3. Occasionally, the bishop states that Christ took our flesh or body of
sin;42 at other times, he insists that Christ had not the flesh of sin but only its
likeness.43 In one place, he does both:

Although He bears our sins, that is, while He assumes the body of our sin
[Rom. 6.6], He Himself does not sin. He was sent in the likeness of our sinful
flesh [Rom. 8.3]; while He indeed bears sins in the flesh, they are our sins. …
‘For our sake he made him to be sin who knew nothing of sin.’ [2 Cor. 5.21]
He will condemn sin in the flesh through sin; although He is exempt from
sin, He Himself was made sin, that is, through the flesh He condemns sin in
the flesh [Rom. 8.3] who indeed does not know the flesh but was made flesh
for us, and therefore was wounded because of our iniquities [Isa. 53.5].44

Recalling Stephen McKenna’s observation that Hilary can use the same words
with different meanings,45 we shall assume that the bishop is not being self-
contradictory. As previously indicated, Hilary excludes inherited Adamic sin
from Christ’s humanity. In the quotation above, ‘flesh’ and ‘sin’ seem virtually
interchangeable,46 so that Hilary equates the bearing of our sins with the bearing
of our body and can rephrase 2 Cor. 5.21 to say that Christ ‘does not know the
flesh but was made flesh for us’. The context is a defence of Christ’s freedom
from the experience of pain even though his body is susceptible to suffering.
Hilary’s meaning, then, seems to be as follows: Christ knows (experiences) no
sin and so knows (experiences) no pain, for only a sinful soul is weak enough
to feel pain. But he is ‘made sin’ in the sense of freely submitting to bear a body
which suffers due not to its own sins but to others’. His fleshly passibility is from
and for our fleshly peccability. Insofar as it suffered, which is the consequence

41
Trin. 9.7, 13; 10.7, 23, 35, 46–7.
42
Trin. 1.13; 9.13.
43
Trin. 10.25-6; cf. 10.35; Ladaria, Cristología, pp. 61, 169–70.
44
Trin. 10.47; ET FC 25, p. 435.
45
FC 25, p. xiv.
46
Cf. Trin. 9.13’s line that Rom. 6.10-11 ‘attributed death to sin, that is, to our body’ (FC 25, p. 334).
138 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

of sin, his is the ‘flesh of sin’; insofar as it suffered for others’ sins rather than its
own, his is the mere ‘likeness of the flesh of sin’.47
Following Hilary, the Christological pendulum swung back from the
extreme to which he had taken it. To insulate Christ from inward distress
would seem to estrange him from sympathy with human need. In Italy, a
theologian arose who spoke eloquently of the mystery of Christ’s kenosis to
bear others’ woe in his soul, not only in his body.48

4.3 The passions of the Christ: Ambrose

Ambrose, bishop of Milan (ca. 339–397), built on the Latin foundations of

Tertullian and Hilary, while his fluency in Greek permitted him to import
to the Occident the theology of the Greek fathers. His own teaching found
reception in the East through his volume De Fide, which was cited at the
final five ecumenical councils. His legacy in the West is especially linked
with the thought of his most famous convert, Augustine. Our examination
concerns Ambrose’s works cited in the fallenness debate: De fide (380) and
three successor works, De Spiritu Sancto (381), De incarnationis dominicae
sacramento (381/2) and De paenitentia (written between 384 and 394).49

4.3.1 Incarnation as identification with our injured state

Ambrose follows the Athanasian exegetical tradition by seeing biblical
passages which speak of Christ’s infirmities and inferiority to the Father as

47
Hilary also speaks of Christ’s baptism as the sanctifying of our humanity in him (Trin. 11.17-20).
As Ladaria, Cristología, notes, the bishop closely links Christ’s birth and baptism (107), and the
sanctification involved in the latter is a matter of anointing for service, not cleansing from sin (114–15).
48
Madigan, ‘Ancient and High-Medieval Interpretations’, pp. 162–3, contrasts Hilary’s and Ambrose’s
views on Christ’s passibility.
49
For perspectives on Ambrose’s life, sources, influence, and bibliography, cf. ‘Ambrose, St.’, ODCC
(2005), n.p. Cited 11 December 2012. Online: http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/
acref/9780192802903. 001.0001/acref-9780192802903-e-240; J. Moorhead, Ambrose: Church and
Society in the Late Roman World (London: Longman, 1999); K. E. Power, ‘Ambrose of Milan: Keeper
of the Boundaries’, Theology Today 55.1 (1998), pp. 15–34 (16–20); B. Ramsey, Ambrose (London:
Routledge, 1997), pp. 1–54, 59, 62–3; N. B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a
Christian Capital (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Moorhead, Ambrose, p. 6, claims
that ‘Ambrose’s thought was largely static and displays no marked evolution’. Unless otherwise
noted, all citations of Incarn. are from Saint Ambrose, Saint Ambrose: Theological and Dogmatic
Works (trans. R. J. Deferrari; FC 44; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1963) and all
citations of Fid., Spir., and Paen. are from NPNF2 10.
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 139

references to the Son’s humanity and passages which ascribe divine attributes
to him as markers of his deity. The bishop also insists on the unity of the
theanthropic Christ and the depth of his self-humbling in assuming human
soul and flesh,50 even to the point that he ‘fell’ in death: ‘For the same one
suffered and did not suffer; died and did not die; was buried and was not
buried; rose again and did not rise again; for the body proper took on life
again; for what fell, this rose again [quod cecidit, hoc resurgit]; what did not
fall, did not rise again.’51
In stark contrast with Hilary, Ambrose believes that Christ’s Gethsemane
prayers and cry of dereliction reveal fear of death, doubt (of his human ability,
not of God), friction between his natural human will to live and the divine will
that he die, and the creaturely perception of godforsakenness.52 His suffering
demonstrates that his flesh bears ‘the injury of earthly corruption’.53 Ambrose
underscores the profound salvific solidarity in substance and situation
between Christ and ourselves: it is ‘my will’ which he assumed, suffering and
grieving with me and for me,54 and ‘my disposition of mind’ which he took
‘to emend it’.55
Does this solidarity include sinfulness and accursedness? In De Spiritu
Sancto’s typology of the bronze serpent, the bishop notes that ‘not a real but a
brazen serpent was hanged … because the Lord took on Him the likeness of
a sinner [Rom. 8.3], in the truth, indeed, of His Body, but without the truth
of sin, … imitating a serpent through the deceitful appearance of human
weakness’.56
Like sinners, then, Christ had a weak human body, but unlike them he
was sinless. Echoing Tertullian’s exegesis of Rom. 8.3, Ambrose explains in
De paenitentia that Paul ‘does not say “in the likeness of flesh,” for Christ took
on Himself the reality not the likeness of flesh; nor does [Paul] say in the

50
For example, Fid. 2.1, 8, 11; 3.2, 7-11; 5.16-17; Spir. 2.11.114-9; 3.17.124; Incarn. 35-37, 41, 72-75. On
the theanthropic union, see especially Fid. 2.9.77; Incarn. 35, 75.
51
Incarn. 36; ET FC 44, p. 232; Lat.: J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia latina (217 vols; repr., Turnholti,
Belgium: Typographi Brepols Editores Pontificii, 1966) 16, p. 827d. Fid. 2.8.59 contains the same line
(PL 16, p. 572a).
52
Fid. 2.5.41-46; 2.7.52, 56; Incarn. 37-38, 41, 63. Cf. Madigan, ‘Ancient and High-Medieval
Interpretations’, pp. 162–3, 171.
53
Incarn. 58; ET FC 44, p. 241.
54
Fid. 2.7.53-56; 2.11.91-93.
55
Incarn. 67; ET FC 44, p. 245.
56
Spir. 3.8.50 (NPNF2 10, pp. 310–12); cf. De officiis ministrorum 3.15.94-95 (NPNF2 10, p. 197).
140 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

likeness of sin, for He did no sin [1 Pet. 2.22], but was made sin for us [2 Cor.
5.21]. … He has our flesh, but has not the failings of this flesh.’57
Nor was Christ’s impeccability limited to actual sin, but extended to
original sin. Citing Ps. 51.5 and Rom. 7.24, Ambrose goes on to describe how
sin enfolds the births of all those naturally begotten, and implies that the agent
is the concupiscence which attends conception. In the Virgin Birth, however,
Christ ‘received a stainless body, which not only no sins polluted, but which
neither the generation nor the conception had been stained by any admixture
of defilement. … But the flesh of Christ condemned sin [Rom. 8.3], which He
felt not at His birth and crucified by His death.’58
In De fide, Ambrose twice interprets Christ’s becoming a curse as meaning
that he ‘bore our curses’. This phrase could mean that he was the object of
either our cursing or God’s. Context suggests the former: following the phrase’s
first occurrence, Ambrose speaks of Christ’s enduring insult – clearly not from
God but from people.59 Just before the phrase’s second instance, the bishop
parallels Christ’s being made sin and a curse with his being imprisoned in the
incarceration of ‘the least of these my brethren’ in the Matthean parable of
the sheep and the goats. Again, the implication is that humanity rather than
God is the source of the mistreatment, whether it takes the form of an unjust
gaoling or undeserved verbal abuse.60
Thus far, Ambrose has excluded Christ’s humanity from sinfulness and
divine anathema. In De incarnationis dominicae sacramento 60, however, the
bishop adjudges Gal. 3.13 to mean that Christ ‘himself took on our curse’ (note
the singular) and continues:

Do you wonder, then, that it is written: ‘The Word was made flesh,’ since flesh
was assumed by the Word of God, when of the sin which He did not have,
it is written that He was made sin, that is, not by the nature and operation

57
Paen. 1.3.12 (NPNF2 10, p. 659). Cf. Incarn. 50 (on a Gnostic view of the ‘likeness of flesh’), 76; Spir.
1.9.111 (both on 2 Cor. 5.21); 1.10.114 (on 1 Pet. 2.22).
58
Paen. 1.3.13; ET NPNF2 10, pp. 659–60. Cf. Spir. 1.9.107, 109; J. L. Bastero, ‘La virginidad de María
en San Ambrosio y en San Gregorio de Nisa’, Studien zu Gregor von Nyssa und der Christlichen
Spätantike (ed. H. R. Drobner and C. Klock; Leiden: Brill, 1990), pp. 255–71 (261). On Ambrose’s
doctrine of original sin, cf. Tennant, Sources, pp. 338–43; Williams, Ideas, pp. 299–307; Rondet,
Original Sin, pp. 109–13; Power, ‘Ambrose of Milan’, pp. 29–30; Bray, ‘Original Sin’, pp. 37, 41–3; J. W.
Smith, Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue: The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011), ch. 3.
59
Fid. 2.11.94. The phrase ‘nostra maledicta suscepit’ appears both here and at 5.14.178 (PL 16, pp.
580b and 684c, respectively). ET mine.
60
Fid. 5.14.177-8.
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 141

of sin, inasmuch as He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh; but that
He might crucify our sin in His flesh, He assumed for us the burden of the
infirmities of a body already guilty of fleshly sin.61

One commentator has called these lines ‘troubling’ because they appear to
describe Christ’s body as being, in Ambrose’s words, ‘already guilty of fleshly
sin’.62 We first should note the continuities with De paenitentia: Christ did not
sin, nor was he conceived through sinful concupiscence (‘not by the nature and
operation of sin’) and by virtue of their absence, his was merely the likeness
of sinful flesh. But ‘sinful flesh’ is equivalent to ‘a body already guilty of fleshly
sin’; therefore Ambrose’s meaning is that Christ assumed the same infirmities
that burden sinful flesh, not the same sinfulness of flesh: ‘a body already guilty
of fleshly sin’ is what Christ’s body was like, not what his body was.63 He was
made sin and a curse by bearing flesh laden with the infirmities consequent
upon our sin and accursedness.

4.3.2 Incarnation as rectification of our fleshly state

Through his continuity with human nature yet discontinuity with human
sin, Christ rendered salvation in a fitting manner. It is fitting that, since
flesh had sinned and become Satan’s spoil, the very flesh which had sinned
in Adam should be sacrificed in Christ for its redemption.64 It is apt that
the flesh in which we are tempted, in which concupiscence wars against the
law of our mind, should overcome temptation in Christ, thereby setting us
an example. For just as in the Triumphal Entry he sat upon and directed a
previously untrained donkey, so too in him the law of the mind ruled over
the impulses of the flesh without any danger of peccability.65 These and other

61
FC 44, p. 242; translation altered in light of my own judgements and those of Smith, Christian Grace,
pp. 274–5, n. 46. On FC 44’s translation deficits, see J. C. M. van Winden, review of Saint Ambrose,
Theological and Dogmatic Works, VC 17.4, pp. 241–3.
62
Smith, Christian Grace, p. 266, n. 50 (slightly altered).
63
My conclusion supports Smith’s suggestion, ‘Perhaps Ambrose simply means that Christ, though
sinless, bore our physical infirmities that are the consequence of sin’ (Christian Grace, p. 266, n. 50).
64
Incarn. 54, 56.
65
Fid. 2.11.90-92; 5.14.175; Incarn. 64-69. According to Spir. 1.9.109, Christ crucified our passions
in his body. In his survey of Ambrose’s De Paradiso, J. P. Burns, ‘Creation and Fall according to
Ambrose of Milan’, in Augustine: Biblical Exegete (ed. J. Schnaubelt and F. Van Fleteren; New York:
Peter Lang, 2001), describes the Ambrosian view of humanity’s prelapsarian condition in a manner
reminiscent of Nazianzen: human nature was created with a tension between mind and flesh. The
rational mind (symbolized by Adam) was intended to govern the flesh’s passions (typified by the
142 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

teachings of Ambrose reappear in the writings of his one-time disciple,

Augustine of Hippo.

4.4 Settler of the West’s opinion: Augustine

On Holy Saturday, 387, Ambrose baptized a 32-year-old African rhetoric

teacher and ex-Manichaean whom his sermons had helped to convince of
the truth of Catholic Christianity. Within a handful of years this convert had
returned to Africa (389), taken holy orders (391), and become a bishop himself
(395), an office he held until his death in 430. Over his long life, Augustine of
Hippo produced a vast corpus which has exercised unequalled influence upon
Western Christianity.66 We will limit our consideration to those works which
are referenced in the modern fallenness debate. We look first at Augustine’s
description of the Fall’s relation to humanity generally, then to Christology
specifically.

4.4.1 Humanity: Perfection, defection, infection

In his early postbaptismal works, Augustine refutes the Manichaean doctrine,
which once had beguiled him, of evil as a nature coequal with goodness and
as inherent in the human body. Evil, he insists, is the corruption of God’s good
creation; its root lies not in any nature but in rational beings’ abuse of their
volitional powers. It was Adam’s soul which first led his body into sin rather
than the reverse. Adam turned against God, the source of life and goodness,
and so became for all his offspring the source of death as well as concupiscence
(concupiscentia), a term which Augustine often (though not exclusively)

beasts over which he was to rule) so that humanity might move from mere innocence to final
perfection. The Fall resulted in the mind–flesh tension becoming outright warfare in which the
passions had the upper hand (76–92). Christ’s sitting on a donkey, then, restores the prelapsarian
order of man over beast, reason over passion.
66
For biographies, see J. J. O’Donnell, ‘Augustine the African’, n.p. Cited 11 January 2013. Online:
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/augustine/; B. G. Green, ‘Augustine’, Shapers of Christian
Orthodoxy: Engaging with Early and Medieval Theologians (ed. B. G. Green; Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity, 2010), pp. 235–92 (235–9); P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley:
University of California Press, rev. edn, 2000); G. Bonner, St. Augustine: Life and Controversies (repr.;
Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, rev. edn, 1997). Regarding Augustine’s influence, Green emends
Alfred North Whitehead’s quip about Western philosophy’s debt to Plato: ‘At one level all of Western
theology has been – in a sense – a long series of footnotes to Augustine’ (287).
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 143

uses negatively to speak of lust for power, possessions, revenge, and sexual
activity.67 Sexual reproduction is a related result of the Fall, necessitated to
counter mortality.68
Ironically, Augustine spent the last two decades of his life fighting
against charges of residual Manichaeism. His accusers were the Pelagians. If
Manichaeans exaggerated the world’s evil, Pelagians minimized it. They held
that mortality and sexual concupiscence were natural to humanity even in
Eden, not penalties for sin; Adam transmitted to his line no fallen nature, no
impediment to freely willed sinlessness.69
Augustine offered the Pelagians nuanced responses. Regarding death,
he granted that, in Eden, Adam’s body had been naturally mortal, but that
continual feeding upon the tree of life had preserved it immortal. If Adam had
retained his original innocence, eventually God would have translated him
alive into a state of inherent bodily immortality.70 The death, discomforts, and
other imperfections plaguing the present world had no place in paradise.71
Regarding sexuality, the bishop had reversed his earlier opinion that procreation

67
Ver. rel. 1.11.21–1.12.15; 1.45.83; Fid. symb.4.10; 10.23; Agon. 10.11; Fund. 33; Nat. bon. On inherited
mortality and concupiscence, cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 3.12.1; 4.10.2. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of
these works are from the following sources: for Ver. rel. and Fid. symb., On Christian Belief (ed. B.
Ramsey; WSA I/8; Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2005); for Agon., The Christian Combat (trans. R. P.
Russell; FC 2; New York: Fathers of the Church, 2nd edn, 1950); for Fund. and Nat. bon., NPNF1 4;
for Tract. Ev. Jo., Tractates on the Gospel of John (trans. J. W. Rettig; FC 78 [Tract. 1–10], 79 [Tract.
11–27], 88 [Tract. 28–54]; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988, 1988, 1993,
respectively). For discussions of Augustine’s concept of concupiscentia, see M. Lamberigts, ‘A Critical
Evaluation of Critiques of Augustine’s View of Sexuality’, Augustine and His Critics (ed. R. Dodaro
and G. Lawless; London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 176–97 (180, 185); S. J. Duffy, ‘Anthropology’, P.
Burnell, ‘Concupiscence’, and K. A. Rogers, ‘Fall’, all in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia
(A. D. Fitzgerald [gen. ed.]; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 24–31, 224–7, 351–2, respectively;
Miles, Augustine on the Body, pp. 67–75; U. Bianchi, ‘Augustine on Concupiscence’ and J. van
Oort, ‘Augustine on Sexual Concupiscence and Original Sin’, StPatr 22 (1989), pp. 202–12, 382–6,
respectively.
68
Ver. rel. 1.46.88. For discussions of the content and ancient context of Augustine’s view of sexuality
by scholars sympathetic to him, see Lamberigts, ‘Critical Evaluation’, pp. 176–97; Miles, Augustine
on the Body, pp. 50, 53, 67–75.
69
G. Bonner, ‘Anti-Pelagian Works’, E. TeSelle, ‘Pelagius, Pelagianism’, and J. Wetzel, ‘Sin’, in Augustine
through the Ages, 41–7, 633–40, 800–2, respectively.
70
Pecc. merit.1.2-5; 2.21.35; C. Jul. op. imp. 6.12, 30. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of these works
are from the following sources: for Pecc. merit, Selected Writings on Grace and Pelagianism (ed. B.
Ramsey; trans. R. Teske; WSA [unnumbered]; Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2011); for C. Jul. op. imp.,
Answer to the Pelagians, III: Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian (ed. J. E. Rotelle; trans. R. J. Testke;
WSA I/25; Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1999). According to TeSelle, ‘Pelagius, Pelagianism’, pp. 635–8,
in the decade prior to the Council of Carthage in 411, Augustine himself had hypothesized that
death was natural even in Eden.
71
C. Jul. op. imp. 3.154, 187; 4.114; 6.31.
144 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

would not have occurred without the Fall.72 Paradisiacal procreation, however,
would have happened without evil concupiscence73 and would have produced
instantly articulate, able, and perhaps even adult-bodied newborns.74 The
general sense of shame at nudity;75 the unruliness of the genitals, which
move by concupiscence rather than rationality;76 the unreasoning ignorance,
wordlessness, and helplessness of infants77 – all are effects of what Augustine
calls ‘original sin’ (peccatum originale), the sin bequeathed by Adam to all his
naturally begotten descendants.78
Against the Pelagian denial that we inherit original sin from Adam,
Augustine summons the testimonies of fathers both Latin and Greek, among
them Irenaeus, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, and Gregory Nazianzen.79
Building upon hints from his old mentor Ambrose,80 Augustine also develops
an explanation as to how original sin has passed from generation to generation:
the sexual concupiscence inseparable from postlapsarian procreation infects
every child thereby conceived with concupiscence of its own, hence with
original sin. Thus even neonates lie guilty before God and require baptism
for the remission of Adam’s sin.81 Even after baptism and even in the holiest
of mortals, concupiscence remains for a lifetime, goading us towards sin:

72
E. A. Clark, ‘Generation, Degeneration, Regeneration: Original Sin and the Conception of Jesus in
the Polemic between Augustine and Julian of Eclanum’, in Generation and Degeneration: Tropes of
Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity through Early Modern Europe (ed. V. Finucci
and K. Brownlee; Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 17–40 (31); R. A. Markus, ‘Augustine’s
Confessions and the Controversy with Julian of Eclanum: Manicheism Revisited’, in Collectanea
Augustiniana Mélanges T. J. van Bavel (ed. B. Bruning, M. Lamberigts and J. van Houtem; 2 vols;
Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990) 2, pp. 913–25 (921–2); van Oort, ‘Augustine on Sexual
Concupiscence’, p. 385.
73
C. Jul. 3.25.57; 5.16.63; C. Jul. op. imp. 2.39, 42, 45, 122; 5.14-17, 20; cf. Brown, Augustine of Hippo,
pp. 500–2. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of C. Jul. are from Against Julian (trans. M. A.
Schumacher; FC 35; New York: Fathers of the Church, 1957).
74
Pecc. merit.1.37.68–1.38.69.
75
Pecc. merit.1.16.21; 2.22.36; C. Jul. op. imp. 1.48; 4.37, 41, 44; 5.5, 8.
76
Trin. 13.18.23; C. Jul. 2.3.5; 3.26.61-62; 6.23.70-73; cf. C. Jul. op. imp. 4.39. Unless otherwise noted,
all citations of Trin. are from The Trinity (trans. S. McKenna; FC 45; Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1963).
77
Pecc. merit.1.35.65-1.36.69; 2.29.48; cf. C. Jul. op. imp. 3.154, 187; 4.114; 6.9.
78
Pecc. merit.1.9.9–1.15.20; Trin. 13.12.16; C. Jul. op. imp. 2.76-77; 5.9. Cf. P. Rigby, ‘Original Sin’,
Augustine through the Ages, pp. 607–14; Selected Writings, pp. 78, 97, n. 12; Bray, ‘Original Sin’,
pp. 43–6.
79
For example, C. Jul. 1.5.15; 1.7.32; C. Jul. op. imp.4.71-73. In his appeal to earlier fathers to establish
doctrine, Augustine resembles Cyril of Alexandria, with whom he corresponded regarding the
fortunes of Pelagianism in the East (Keating, Appropriation, p. 229).
80
Rigby, ‘Original Sin’, p. 607; Bianchi, ‘Augustine on Concupiscence’, p. 211.
81
Pecc. merit. 1.9.9-1.15.20; 1.28.55; 2.16.24-25; 2.20.34; 2.23.37; 2.29.47; Ep. 187.31; C. Jul. 1.2.4;
Enchir. 26. Unless otherwise noted, citations of Enchir. are from both FC 2 and WSA I/8. For the
fifth-century scientific context of Augustine’s explanation, see Clark, ‘Generation, Degeneration,
Regeneration’, pp. 17–40. For studies of the antecedents and components of Augustine’s doctrine
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 145

the confessions of the Lord’s Prayer and of Rom. 7.7-24 are those of every
Christian.82 No sinless human ever has been, is, or will be, save Christ.83

4.4.2 Christ: Originally sinless, actually sinless,

vicariously sinful
Augustine’s Christology fits easily within the Latin tradition, pioneered
by Tertullian,84 which affirmed two distinct natures, a divine and a human,
united in one person for the world’s salvation.85 Christ is the one Mediator
(1 Tim. 2.5) ‘who both as God assists [subvenit] men by His divinity, and
as man agrees [convenit] with men by His weakness’.86 Early on, Augustine
portrays Christ’s saving work in exemplarist terms: Adam’s proud lunge
after Godhead wrought his downfall, but the divine Son’s kenosis to assume
humanity models the humility which we must imitate to return to God;87
his victory over temptation sets us a sinless example to follow.88 As bishop,
however, Augustine teaches a deeper view of grace.89 Christ’s condescension
to bear our weak nature provides not merely a moral pattern but a medicine
which heals our pride by his humility, our grasping by his resignation, and
our fear by his resurrection. Only through remaining in him do we share his
victory over Satan.90 In De Trinitate, the bishop details the dynamics of that
victory: Satan had deceived humanity and gained the right to enslave it. Christ

of original sin, see Tennant, Sources; Williams, Ideas, chs 1–5; Rondet, Original Sin, chs 1–10; G. A.
Riggan, Original Sin in the Thought of Augustine (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1970).
82
Pecc. merit.2.4.4; C. Jul. 2.3.5; 3.26.61-62; 6.23.70-73; C. Jul. op. imp. 4.89.
83
Pecc. merit.1.39.70; 2.4.4; 2.16.24-25; 2.20.34; 2.29.47; Ep. 187.28; cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 41.5.1; 41.9.2.
Before the Council of Carthage (418) ruled that all humans but Christ were sinful, Augustine had
allowed that some may have lived sinlessly (Selected Writings, p. 218, n. 3). Unless otherwise noted,
all citations of Ep. 187 are from Letters Vol. IV [165–203] (trans. W. Parsons; FC 30; New York:
Fathers of the Church, 1955).
84
On Augustine’s relationship to Tertullian, see F. Chapot, ‘Tertullian’, Augustine through the Ages,
pp. 822–4.
85
B. E. Daley, ‘Christology’, Augustine through the Ages, pp. 164–9. Cf. Keating, Appropriation, pp. 230–
51, who finds significant parallels between Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria on the Incarnation
and deification.
86
Trin. 13.17.22; ET FC 45, p. 343; Lat.: PL 42, p. 1032. Cf. Agon. 18.20–22.24; Pecc. merit.1.31.60;
Serm. 174.1-2; Ep. 137.8-9, 11-12; Ep. 187.7-10. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of Serm. 174
are from Sermons III/5 [151–183] (trans. E. Hill; WSA III/5; Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1992)
and all citations of Ep. 137 are from Letters Vol. III [131–164] (trans. W. Parsons; FC 20; New York:
Fathers of the Church, 1953).
87
Fid. symb. 4.6.
88
Ver. rel. 1.16.30-32; 1.24.45; 1.38.69-71.
89
F. G. Clancy, ‘Redemption’, Augustine through the Ages, 702–4 (702); cf. the comment by M.
Fiedrowicz and E. Hill in On Christian Belief, p. 49, n. 67.
90
Agon. 1.1; 10.11–11.12; Trin. 13.17.22.
146 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

could have been made man without human parentage, as Adam was, but he
submitted to enter Adam’s line of descent in order to conquer Satan in the very
nature conquered by Satan. Though the devil’s temptations failed and he found
nothing of sin in Christ (Jn 14.30), he still inflicted death, sin’s punishment,
upon Jesus. Satan’s unjust penalizing of Christ resulted in the loss of Satan’s
right over the rest of humankind.91
Augustine accounts for Christ’s sinlessness, so crucial to his exemplary
and emancipative roles, in various complementary ways. First, his mother
conceived virginally, by faith and not by conjugal concupiscence, and so broke
the chain of contamination of the flesh by original sin. Although she herself
had sinful flesh, from her he took flesh but not sin.92 Secondly, at the moment
of conception, Christ’s human soul also was free or freed from original sin,
either by being created pure and then remaining undefiled through union
with a sinless body (if creationism be correct) or else by being purified by
God immediately upon its derivation from Mary (if traducianism be true).93
Finally, Christ’s divine nature imparted such grace to the human nature united
to it that the human nature became impeccable, thereby securing him against
actual sin.94 As Augustine never tires of repeating, Christ came in the likeness
of sinful flesh, not in sinful flesh itself.95 The story of the bronze serpent typifies
this truth: ‘The Lord did not take into his flesh sin, which is like the venom of
the snake, but he did take death. Thus the punishment of sin was present in
the likeness of sinful flesh without guilt so that he might destroy in sinful flesh
both the guilt and the punishment.’96

91
Trin. 4.13.17; 13.13-18. Cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 3.13.1; Pecc. merit.2.30.49; Serm. 265D.4-5. Unless otherwise
noted, all citations of Serm. 265D are from Sermons III/7 [230–272B] (trans. E. Hill; WSA III/7;
Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1993).
92
Tract. Ev. Jo. 4.10.2-3; 10.11-12; Pecc. merit.1.28-29; 2.24.38; C. Jul. 2.4.8; 5.15.52, 54, 57; Enchir. 34,
41; C. Jul. op. imp. 4.78-84, 134. On Mary’s own birth as concupiscent, see D. E. Doyle, ‘Mary, Mother
of God’, Augustine through the Ages, pp. 542–5 (544), but cf. Selected Writings, p. 218, n. 3.
93
Ep. 164.19; cf. Pecc. merit. 2.11.16. Unless otherwise noted, all citations of Ep. 164 are from FC 20.
For a fascinating, if speculative, argument that Augustine secretly held to a pre-existent, sinless
human soul of Christ in the tradition of Origen, see D. Keech, The Anti-Pelagian Christology of
Augustine of Hippo, 396–430 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
94
Enchir. 36, 40–1. On the origins of Christ’s sinlessness, see Daley, ‘Christology’, pp. 167–8.
95
Serms. 184; 185.1; Ep. 164.19; Pecc. merit.1.27.44; 1.28.55; 1.39.70; 2.23.37; 2.36.58; 3.12.21; Ep.
187.31; Tract. Ev. Jo. 42.1.1 (which links Rom. 8.3 with Phil. 2.7; just as Christ is like sinful flesh but
is not sinful flesh, so also he takes the form of a servant but is not a servant); C. Jul. 5.4.17; 5.15.52;
6.19.62; Enchir. 41–42; C. Jul. op. imp. 2.17, 225; 4.58, 63, 78-84; 6.33-34. Unless otherwise noted,
all citations of Serm. 184 and 185 are from Sermons III/6 [184–229] (trans. E. Hill; WSA III/6; New
Rochelle, NY: New City Press, 1993). For the significance of Rom. 8.3 to Augustine in the Pelagian
controversy and his dependence on Origen’s exegesis, see Keech, Anti-Pelagian Christology, chs 3–4.
96
Pecc. merit.1.32.61; ET Selected Writings, p. 138.
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 147

Augustine’s interpretation of ‘the likeness of sinful flesh’ permits him to

ascribe some and deny others of the common characteristics of fallen humanity
to Christ. As Dominic Keech notes, ‘In order for it to be salvific, Christ has to
assume a post-Adamic humanity, which is neither the pristine nature enjoyed
by Adam at his first creation, nor fully conformed to sinful nature, as in the
case of the rest of postlapsarian humanity.’97 Thus the Saviour endured the
imperfections of fallen infant physique and the need to grow up, but without
the weak-mindedness of small children in their ignorance and irrational
emotionalism.98 Inasmuch as he lacked concupiscence, he was baptized not
for his own sake but for ours, that by imitating him we might receive the
regeneration which he did not require.99 He suffered weariness in his flesh100
and grief in his soul101 but never godforsakenness: his cry of dereliction on the
Cross expresses a counterfactual of identification with sinners, a placing of
our complaint upon his lips.102 He took mortal flesh from Mary,103 yet could
not die but by his choice.104 Nor was it possible for his human soul to die, for
soul-death is deadness in sin; rather, he died only bodily.105 This death serves
as a prefiguration of our death to sin, not a prototype of it – else Christ would
have needed to have had personal sin to which to die.106 The Pauline claim that
for us the Sinless One ‘became sin’ (2 Cor. 5.21) means that Christ ‘became
a sin offering’, for the Septuagint uses ‘sin’ to mean ‘sin offering’.107 Augustine

97
Keech, Anti-Pelagian Christology, p. 101.
98
Pecc. merit.1.37.68; 2.29.48. As Keech, Anti-Pelagian Christology, p. 186, comments, ‘To account for
the infancy of Christ, Augustine resorts to a formula which is difficult not to interpret as a subtle
form of docetism.’
99
Tract. Ev. Jo. 4.13-14; Pecc. merit.2.24.38; Ep. 187.30; Enchir. 49; C. Jul. op. imp. 4.45-54, 58-64.
100
Tract. Ev. Jo. 15.6; Ep. 137.9.
101
Serm. 265D.3.
102
Trin. 4.3.6; 4.13.16; R. D. Williams, ‘Augustine’s Christology: Its Spirituality and Rhetoric’, Shadow,
pp. 176–89 (183–6). Based on this exegesis and on Augustine’s denial of concupiscence to Christ,
Teske argues that while the bishop may claim that Christ modelled for us successful resistance to
temptation, this claim is undermined by Christ’s being sheltered from any temptation by doubt or
lust: see R. J. Teske, Augustine of Hippo: Philosopher, Exegete, and Theologian: A Second Collection of
Essays (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009), pp. 215–33.
103
Tract. Ev. Jo. 3.12.1-2; 4.2.3–4.3.1; C. Jul. 5.15.54-55.
104
Pecc. merit. 2.29.48; cf. 2.31.51; Trin. 4.13.16; C. Jul. op. imp. 6.34; cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 47.7. Augustine uses
Jn 10.18; 14.31; and Phil. 2.8 as proof texts.
105
Serm. 265D.3, 5; Eps. 137.12; 164.19; Trin. 4.2.4–4.3.6; cf. Coll. Max. 14. Unless otherwise noted,
all citations of Coll. Max. are from Arianism and Other Heresies (trans. R. J. Teske; WSA I/18; Hyde
Park, NY: New City Press, 1995).
106
Pecc. merit. 2.23.37; Tract. Ev. Jo. 41.6; cf. Ep. 187.30; C. Jul. 6.3.7; Enchir. 42.
107
Tract. Ev. Jo. 41.5-6; Enchir. 41. For the evolution of Augustine’s exegesis of 2 Cor 5:21, see A.
Bastiaensen, ‘Augustine’s Pauline Exegesis and Ambrosiaster’, Augustine: Biblical Exegete, pp. 33–54
(47–50).
148 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

summarizes the whole interplay between Christ and sin: ‘There is only one
person who has been born without sin in the likeness of sinful flesh, who lived
without sin in the midst of others’ sins, and who died without sin on account
of our sins.’108 The bishop bequeathed this perspective to the West generally
and to our last father particularly.

4.5 Chalcedon and context: Leo the Great

The final theologian whose view of Christ’s humanity we shall analyse is Pope
Leo the Great (reigned 440–61), who synthesized the thoughts of Latin and
Greek authors alike, especially Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria.109 Leo’s
Epistola 28, widely known as his Tome (449), received ecumenical approval at
the Council of Chalcedon (451)110 and is a key source in the fallenness debate.
Yet that Tome – actually the first of two – must not be interpreted in isolation. In
composing it, Leo drew upon Christmas sermons preached early in his papacy,
sermons which themselves must be interpreted in relation to the whole of his
systematic exposition of Christian doctrine through annual homiletic cycles.
Furthermore, Leo’s thought (or at least its expression) developed beyond the
First Tome, and his most mature statement of Christology comes in his Second
Tome (458).111

108
Pecc. merit.2.35.57; ET Selected Writings, p. 193. Cf. Trin. 4.14.19; Enchir. 41–2.
109
Leo, however, apparently knew no Greek. On Leo’s life and patristic influences upon him, see A.
Saenz, San Leon Magno y los Misterios de Cristo (Paraná, Argentina: Mikael, 1984), p. 24; P. L.
Barclift, ‘The Shifting Tones of Pope Leo the Great’s Christological Vocabulary’, Church History 66.2
(1997), pp. 221–39 (224); B. Green, The Soteriology of Leo the Great (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), pp. vii, 13–17, 22, 25–8, 45–60, 104–16, 249; B. Neil, Leo the Great (London: Routledge,
2009), pp. 1–50, 95; ‘Leo I, St.’ ODCC (2005), n.p. Cited 14 December 2012. Online: http://www.
oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001/acref-9780192802903-e-4020.
For the consistency (though with different foci) between Leo and Cyril on Incarnation and
deification, see Keating, Appropriation, pp. 251–88. Leo repeatedly claims unanimity in doctrine
with Athanasius and Cyril, as well as with Theophilus of Alexandria (Ep. 117, 129). In the list of
corroborative testimonies attached to his Second Tome (Ep. 165), Leo quotes them alongside Hilary
of Poitiers, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, and Nazianzen. Unless otherwise noted, all citations
of Leo’s letters are from Letters (trans. E. Hunt; FC 34; New York: Fathers of the Church, 1957).
110
‘Tome of Leo’ in ODCC (2005), n.p. Cited 14 December 2012. Online: http://www.oxfordreference.
com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001/acref-9780192802903-e-6907. This source and
Lampe, ‘Christian Theology’, pp. 140–1, claim Tertullian’s influence on the First Tome, a claim
questioned by J. A. McGuckin, ‘Mystery or Conundrum? The Apprehension of Christ in the
Chalcedonian Definition’, Shadow, pp. 246–59 (252–3).
111
Saenz synchronically surveys Leo’s sermons in their specific liturgical contexts. Casula, Cristologia;
Barclift, ‘Shifting Tones’; and Green, Soteriology; and J. M. Armitage, A Twofold Solidarity: Leo the
Great’s Theology of Redemption (Strathfield, Australia: St Pauls, 2005) all seek to place the First
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 149

4.5.1 The Christmas sermons

In Leo’s Christmas sermons, certain themes recur. Christ took from Mary a
human nature consubstantial with ours, a lowly nature capable of death and
physical corruption.112 Yet in sharing these infirmities, Christ did not share the
contagion of our sin. The homily for 442 is especially explicit on this point:

In the whole and perfect nature of true man, therefore, true God was
born, complete in divine attributes, complete in human ones. In speaking
about ‘human ones,’ we mean those which the Creator put into us from
the beginning, the same ones that he took on to be restored. Whatever the
deceiver introduced and humanity in being deceived allowed, these things
do not have even a trace in the Savior. Simply because he submitted to a
share in human infirmities, he did not on that account become party to our
sins. He assumed the ‘form of a servant’ without the stain of sin.113

Leo regularly employs an Augustinian explanation: no sinful concupiscence

attended Christ’s conception; rather, the undefiled virginity of his mother
produced a child uniquely undefiled by original sin.114 His nativity is thus the
pattern for the new birth which we may share: the Holy Spirit who filled Mary’s
womb to exclude original sin from Christ’s humanity is the same Spirit who
fills the baptismal water to grant us the regeneration which frees our humanity
from original sin.115

4.5.2 The Paschal sermons

Leo’s Christmas sermons lay the dogmatic foundations for interpreting
Christ’s earthly life. For the full implications of the theanthropic Saviour’s
sinless participation in the human experience, we must turn to the pontiff ’s
Holy Week sermons. Here he specifies that the human weaknesses endured

Tome in the wider context of Leo’s corpus. Green’s exceptional study discusses both diachronically
and synchronically the interconnectedness of the pope’s sermons (viii, 87–9) and the First Tome’s
relation to Leo’s Ep. 124 to Palestinian monks (453), later rewritten as the Second Tome (viii–ix, 188,
236–8, 247, 252). Unless otherwise noted, all citations of Leo’s sermons are from Sermons (trans. J. P.
Freeland and A. J. Conway; FC 93; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).
112
Tr. 21.1-2; 22.2; 24.3; 25.1-2.
113
Tr. 23.2; ET FC 93, p. 89.
114
Tr. 21.1-2; 22.1-3; 23.1, 3; 24.3; 25.4-5; 26.3; 28.2-4. Cf. Casula, pp. 201–6. Pace Armitage, pp. 67,
70, Tr. 22.2 teaches that God preserved Mary as virgo en partu, not that Christ’s whole career was a
preservation of ‘Marian purity’.
115
Tr. 21.3; 24.3; 25.5; 26.2; 27.2; cf. 63.6.
150 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

by Christ – fatigue, hunger, grief, fear, pain, mortality – were brought upon
the human race by sin.116 Echoing Nazianzen’s non-assumptus, Leo preaches
that Christ ‘took the reality of our weakness and excluded nothing of human
infirmity from himself except participation in our sin. That way, he might
bring his own [divine] nature to us and heal ours in himself.’117 For example,
his confession of sorrow and prayer for the cup to pass while in Gethsemane
and later his cry of dereliction on Calvary prove that he had taken not merely
human flesh with its sensations but likewise a human mind with its feelings,
even the feeling of fear. Christ’s Gethsemane prayers reveal him overcoming
a sincere yet sinless unwillingness to die – a victory which he confers to the
cowardly Peter and to us. Leo is careful to note that even in Gethsemane,
Christ retained his omnipotence, and even on the Cross, he remained
undivided from the Father. The human weakness which his words express is
ever voluntary, nonetheless genuine. He heals our weakness by persevering
through the Passion to the Resurrection and communicating to us his
sacramental power and ethical pattern.118
Throughout the homilies, Leo often links together the phrases ‘the form
of a slave’ (Phil. 2.7) and ‘the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Rom. 8.3) to describe
Christ’s assumed human nature.119 Due to the Fall, all humankind was enslaved
to Satan, but God’s Son took the form, yet not the state, of a slave.120 He bore
the likeness of sinful flesh but was sinless in the flesh. By these distinctions, Leo
intends that Christ bore all the weaknesses associated with sin yet was without
sin. This understanding remains constant even when the pope preaches that
Christ ‘took on not only the substance but even the conditions [conditionem] of
sinful nature’, for Leo straightaway clarifies, ‘Divine impassibility allowed those
things to be brought upon him which human mortality suffers in its misery.’121
Thus Christ took both the true human substance and the condition of weakness

116
Tr. 63.4.
117
Tr. 67.5; ET FC 93, p. 294. Cf. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition 1, p. 531.
118
Tr. 54.2, 4-5; 58.4-5; 59.1; 63.4; 67.5, 7; 68.1-2. On Christ’s double provision of sacramentum and
exemplum (terms derived from Hilary), see Green, Soteriology, pp. 59, 114, 177.
119
Tr. 25.2; 63.4; 67.6; 77.2; cf. 62.2, which blends Augustine’s interpretation of 2 Cor. 5.21 with Rom.
8.3 (‘both “knowing no sin” and yet sacrificed “in the likeness of sinful flesh” for sinners’ [FC 93,
p. 270]).
120
Tr. 22.3.
121
Tr. 71.2; ET FC 93, p. 312; Lat.: PL 54, p. 387c. Barclift, ‘Shifting Tones’, p. 225, sees the first line
as ‘hyperbole’. H. Arens, Die christologische Sprache Leos des Grossen: Analyse des Tomus an den
Patriarchen Flavian (Freiburg: Herder, 1982), p. 351, identifies this conditionem as susceptibility to
death.
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 151

(misery and mortality), which in all other humans are characteristics of sin’s
slaves, but in him that substance and that weakened condition exist absent the
state of enslavement to sin.122
The pope has good reason for such careful nuancing of Christ’s appearing: it
is crucial to Leonine interpretation of the Atonement. On this view, Satan did
not enslave humanity by force, but by manipulating Adam into freely ceding
authority to him. God’s response was in keeping with principles of fair play:
rather than liberate humanity by force and by mere divinity, God acted from
within the very human nature which Satan had ensnared and manipulated
Satan into freely overreaching himself. Because Jesus possessed a human
nature in its condition of weakness consequent upon sin, Satan presumed that
this Nazarene also must be afflicted by original sin and so be by right his prey.
Since, however, Christ was entirely sinless, in killing him Satan overstepped
his jurisdiction and so forfeited his claim to the rest of humanity.123

4.5.3 From the First to the Second Tome

Turning from Leo’s sermons to his First Tome, we find much continuity.124
Here the pope affirms that Christ was born of Mary without loss of divinity
‘so that by his virtue he both conquered death and destroyed the devil, who
used to have power over death [Heb. 2.14]. For we could not overcome the
originator of sin and death, if he (sc. Christ) had not assumed our nature and
made it his own, he whom sin could not stain nor death detain.’125 Implicit in
these lines is Leo’s view of the Atonement.126

122
Cf. Casula, Cristologia, p. 104. Armitage, Twofold Solidarity, pp. 75–6, compounds errors: 1.
His own parenthetical Latin calls into question his claim that, for Leo, ‘Christ deals with sin by
inheriting “sinful flesh” (factus in similitudinem carnis peccati)’: for an Augustinian like Leo, the
similitudinem significantly qualifies the carnis peccati. 2. Neither Leo nor Tertullian taught that
Christ possessed ‘sin in the flesh’ – quite the contrary, as this study demonstrates. 3. Inasmuch
as, for Leo, Christ never took a slave’s state, it is false to speak of ‘his own liberation from slavery
to the devil’. Cf. the careful distinction in D. Mozeris, Doctrina Sancti Leonis Magni de Christo
Restitutore et Sacerdote (Mundelein, IL: Seminarii Sanctae Mariae ad Lacum, 1940), p. 11, between
sin’s penalties (infirmities and mortality), which Christ bore, and sin’s guilt and captivity, from
which he was free.
123
Tr. 21.1; 22.3-4; 28.3; 69.3-4. For a ‘modern version’ of Leo’s sermons on Christ’s defeat of the devil,
see A. Field, Delivered from Evil: Jesus’ Victory over Satan (Cincinnati: Servant, 2005).
124
For a thorough treatment of the First Tome, including its sources, see Arens, Die christologische
Sprache. On a smaller scale, see Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition 1, pp. 530–9.
125
Ep. 28.2; ET Neil, Leo the Great, p. 97 (parenthetical remark hers). On the background of this passage
in Tr. 21 and Heb. 2.14, see Arens, Die christologische Sprache, pp. 178, 180.
126
Casula, Cristologia, pp. 240–1; Neil, Leo the Great, pp. 29, 68; cf. Green, Soteriology, p. 212.
152 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Leo then quotes a series of passages from his first four Christmas sermons.
The first passage describes the union of humble, weak, mortal, and passible
human nature with majestic, mighty, eternal, and impassible divine nature in
Christ for the sake of our healing.127 The second passage is the affirmation,
quoted in 4.5.1 above, that Christ assumed what the Creator originally had
formed, not the sinful attributes which the devil had introduced into human
nature. Christ’s simultaneous existence in the form of God (the divine nature)
and the form of a slave (the human nature) is the thrust of the third passage.128
The fourth passage explains that because of the absence of lust from the virginal
conception, Christ shares our passible, mortal substance but not our guilt.129
The pontiff proceeds to cite a series of events in the Gospels. In some, Christ
displays human weakness (e.g. birth, hunger, temptation, suffering). In others,
he reveals divine greatness (e.g. receiving worship, performing miracles,
granting eternal life). Leo’s point in citing these events – many of which
had featured in his sermons – is to underscore the presence and integrity of
both natures, human and divine, in Christ, over against Nestorius’ alleged
undervaluing of Christ’s divinity130 and Eutyches’ apparent compromising of
Christ’s humanity.
Following the First Tome’s approval by the Council of Chalcedon, Leo
continued to articulate these themes. His anti-Eutychian letter to Bishop
Juvenal of Jerusalem reminds the hierarch that Christ’s real humanity required
food and sleep and felt sadness and fear even as his real divinity wrought
miracles and raised his body from the grave.131 Leo also makes his usual careful
distinction between human weakness and sinfulness in Christ,

who is crucified in our flesh … which, admitting of no sin, could not have
been mortal had it not been of our species. In order to restore life to all, He
took up the cause of all …. Thus, just as all were made sinners through the

127
Ep. 28.3, quoting Tr. 21.2 (Green, Soteriology, pp. 108, 213–14; Arens, Die christologische Sprache,
p. 314).
128
Ep. 28.3; both passages are quotes from Tr. 23.2 (Green, Soteriology, p. 214; Arens, Die christologische
Sprache, pp. 354–5); cf. Tr. 22.1. I find unconvincing the claim of Armitage, Twofold Solidarity,
pp. 87–9, that for the ancients Christ’s double consubstantiality was a matter of epistemology
and sociology but not metaphysics. The lattermost is the ultimate ground of the former two, as a
civilization soaked in classical philosophy would have known well.
129
Ep. 28.4, quoting Tr. 22.1-3, with phrases from Tr. 24.3 (Green, Soteriology, p. 216; Arens, Die
christologische Sprache, pp. 396, 399–403).
130
Green, Soteriology, p. 53; but cf. 60, 229. Green argues that Leo wrote his First Tome under the
illusion that Nestorius taught adoptionism.
131
Ep. 139.2.
 The Latin Fathers on the Fallenness or Unfallenness of Christ’s Humanity 153

guilt of one man, so also all might become guiltless through the guiltlessness
of one, with justification flowing upon all men from Him who took on man’s
nature. By no consideration is He lacking in the reality of our body.132

As in the past, the pope wishes to preserve the integrity of Christ’s humanity
against encroachment by either divinity or depravity – the former would
render his flesh unable, the latter unfit, to die as a sacrifice.
Lastly, Leo’s Second Tome, his definitive Christological statement sent to
the Roman emperor, sounds the same notes. Christ took from Mary ‘real flesh
containing our weakness’.133 As Mediator, he both is equal to his Father and
shares the servile status of humanity.134 We who are born bound by original sin
were released by ‘a man of our species and our nature … who was not bound
by any previous conviction for sin and who by His stainless blood would blot
out the decree of death against us’.135
In light of the extensive context canvassed above, it is clear that when Leo’s
First Tome asserts that Christ assumed our nature as created, without ‘whatever
the deceiver introduced and humanity in being deceived allowed’, the pope
means only to exclude sin, not the amoral effects of the Fall.136 His very next
line speaks of how Christ ‘submitted to a share in human infirmities … [and]
assumed the “form of a servant”’.137 The rest of his corpus concurs. Leo thus
depicts Christ’s humanity as restored to a prelapsarian state of sinlessness
while partaking thoroughly of postlapsarian infirmities.

Conclusion

Complementing the previous chapter’s study of the Greek fathers, this chapter
has queried the Latin fathers for their understanding of the relationship of the
Fall to Christ’s humanity. Terminologically, we found no exact parallels to the
Greeks’ occasional claims that Christ assumed a ‘fallen’ or ‘sinful’ humanity.
The closest approximation appeared in Ambrose’s statement that Christ ‘fell’

132
Ep. 139.3; ET FC 34, p. 229.
133
Ep. 165.3; ET FC 34, p. 265.
134
Ep. 165.4.
135
Ep. 165.9; ET FC 34, p. 272.
136
This is also Arends’ contention in his careful discussion, Die christologische Sprache, pp. 371–5.
137
Ep. 28.3; ET FC 93, p. 89; cf. Tr. 23.2.
154 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

in death, but here it is questionable whether the bishop, in employing a generic

Latin circumlocution for dying, also means to allude to Genesis 3.138 On the
other hand, Tertullian and Leo echo Irenaeus and Contra Apollinarium in
applying prelapsarian language to Christ’s assumption of human nature.
Conceptually, the Latin fathers, like their Greek brethren, teach that
in the virginal conception, God’s Son breaks the hold of sin upon human
nature so that his own humanity, like unfallen Adam’s, is unblemished by sin,
uncontrolled by Satan, and under no debt to die. Yet in salvific solidarity with
guilty humanity, he suffers from various effects of the Fall, including bodily
torment and death (and, for Augustine, the fallen state which is infancy).
Hilary, however, reduces much of this solidarity in suffering to pretence. All
the Latin fathers see Christ as keeping his inner human desires under discipline
so that they never exist in a state of sin (i.e. concupiscence in Augustine’s usual
negative sense). Hilary so emphasizes this point as to make Christ’s human
soul insensible to pain, but the rest of the fathers do not follow the bishop of
Poitiers to such an extreme. Rather, they allow for Christ to experience anger
and strong desire (Tertullian), grief (Augustine, Leo), and even self-doubt and
fear of death (Ambrose).
We have reached the end of our examination of the patristic sources most
widely cited by our selected modern debaters. It remains for us to evaluate the
debate in light of our findings, draw conclusions, and recommend avenues for
further research. We will take up these tasks in our final chapter.

138
Cf. the term ‘the departed’ in common English; generally the use of this term would not intend a
biblical allusion to Israelites’ departure from Egypt in the Exodus. On the generic Latin meaning
of cado, see the entry in D. P. Simpson, Cassell’s Latin and English Dictionary (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley,
2002), p. 29. According to Williams, Ideas, the noun casus is used for the Fall of Adam in 4 Esd. 7.118
(252, n. 4); later the term lapsus became the standard Latin designation for the Fall (302–3).
 5

The Fleshing Out of the Findings

In relation to the modern fallenness debate, where do the fathers stand and
what contribution might they make towards its resolution? This twofold
question has guided our study. Chapters 1 and 2 summarized the views of,
respectively, five modern fallenness proponents and five modern unfallenness
proponents, including their appeals to or against the church fathers. In
Chapter 3, we examined the positions of five Greek fathers, and in Chapter 4,
those of five Latin fathers. This chapter uses our patristic findings to evaluate
the modern debaters’ historical and theological claims and then offers
recommendations for advancing the conversation.

5.1 Righting history: The modern debaters on the fathers

In examining the patristic sources cited by the modern debaters, we found

that there is some precedent in the Greek fathers for referring to the humanity
which Christ bore as ‘fallen’, even ‘sinful’. For their part, the Latin fathers do
not follow this practice, except in Ambrose’s use of ‘fell’ as a circumlocution
for ‘died’ in relation to Christ’s body. Despite this variation in terminology, the
Greek and Latin fathers concur that, in the virginal conception, God acted to
purify the postlapsarian human nature which Christ assumed so that it was
free from sinful passions and from mastery by Satan and death. Some fathers,
both Greek and Latin, describe this purified condition in prelapsarian terms.
Yet all agree that Christ suffered all the ills of a physically corruptible human
nature in a world traumatized by sin: hunger, fear, grief, temptation, pain,
and mortality. For Hilary, much of this suffering is considerably enervated.
For Nyssen and Augustine, however, even Christ’s being born a helpless
baby requiring growth indicates his sharing our fallen condition. Those
156 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Greek fathers who call Christ’s humanity ‘fallen’ or ‘sinful’ mean by these
terms that it was afflicted with sin’s results, not that it was genuinely sinful
after conception. In light of these findings, the modern debaters’ patristic
interpretations require evaluation.

5.1.1 Edward Irving

Irving’s teaching that Christ’s humanity bears constitutional sin, including
guilty concupiscence, has no patristic grounding, whether in the (mostly
Latin) fathers whom he cites or in the (mostly Greek) fathers whom his
contemporary defenders have adduced in his support.1 Irving culls patristic
proof texts which speak of Christ’s humanity’s reality and completeness and
of his sharing our infirmities, including suffering and death.2 Irving then
interprets these texts under the belief that the attributes of fallenness are
indivisible and so infirmities imply sinful concupiscence even in Christ’s case.
The fathers believe otherwise. Irenaeus and Tertullian both reject the Gnostic
equation of flesh with sinfulness and its implication that Christ either shared
our sin by sharing our nature or else did not share our nature lest he share our
sin. Augustine later does likewise with Manichaeism; Contra Apollinarium’s
author and the Gregories oppose Apollinarianism for the same reason; and
Cyril anathematizes Nestorius for teaching (according to Cyril) that Christ
sacrificed himself for his own sinfulness. All the fathers assert Christ’s
assumption of a real humanity like ours and, with it, sinless infirmities, but
exclude every manifestation of sin – whether sinful impulse or sinful action.
Additionally, Irving makes a more thorough division between Christ’s
divine person and human nature than is the fathers’ tendency. While they
distinguish between the two, they still allow for the attributes of Christ’s
humanity to be predicated of his person. Irving, however, refuses to predicate
of Christ’s person the sinfulness which he graphically predicates of Christ’s
humanity. Although less than full-bodied Nestorianism, such refusal raises
that heresy’s spectre, however strenuously Irving and his defenders may insist
that he confesses but one person in Christ.3 In the end, Irving seems guilty

1
See the reviews of Nantomah’s and Dorries’ works in this study’s Introduction, 0.3.
2
See the appendix for Irving’s quotations from the fathers selected for this study.
3
As in Lee, ‘Humanity of Christ’, p. 44.
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 157

of a hybrid heresy – ‘Gnostorianism’, if one wishes to summarize it – which

combines Gnostic substantialization of the flesh’s sinfulness with Nestorian
predication of sin to Christ’s humanity and non-predication of human
attributes to Christ’s person.4
Irving himself accuses his contemporaries of Gnosticism, Manichaeism,
Eutychianism, and Monothelitism for presenting a Christ whose humanity is
better than ours.5 This study has considered only one of those contemporaries,
the elder Marcus Dods, against whom twentieth-century defenders of Irving
also have levelled charges of Monophysitism and Eutychianism.6 Yet the fathers
themselves present a Christ whose earthly humanity was ‘better’ than ours
in the specific sense that it was free from sinful passions. Leo’s Tome teaches
this point simultaneously with condemning Eutychianism. The Council of
Chalcedon authorized the Tome and issued a Definition which excludes
both Eutychianism and sin in its account of the constitution of Christ. These
formative documents of orthodoxy cannot reasonably be construed as Gnostic
or Manichaean, and Monothelitism eventually was ruled to be incompatible
with their doctrine.
As for Dods, he distances himself directly from Manichaeism (and indirectly
from Gnosticism) by asserting the essential goodness of human nature,
whether in Christ or in us.7 Regarding Eutychianism and Monophysitism
(and, by extension, Monothelitism), the evidence is less clear. Dods allows
that Christ experienced various infirmities but insists that his flesh was free
from the necessity of death and corruption; rather, he voluntarily surrendered
his life.8 It may be that Dods means that Christ’s humanity was naturally
prone to death and decay but that his divine power regulated these natural

4
Nestorianism, it bears recalling, is a set of doctrines condemned by ecumenical councils and may
not reflect accurately Nestorius’ own views. Lee, ‘Humanity of Christ’, p. 50, claims that Irving is
orthodox because he affirms Chalcedon’s two-nature Christology. But the Definition of Chalcedon
also states that Christ is ‘like us in all respects, apart from sin’ and speaks of ‘the characteristics of
each nature … coming together to form one person and subsistence’ (H. Bettenson [ed.], Documents
of the Christian Church [New York: Oxford University Press, 1947], p. 73). Our study shows that
the fathers understood Christ’s sinlessness to exclude already-sinful passions. Furthermore, Irving
counts constitutional sin as a characteristic of Christ’s human nature, yet one which does not
contribute to the formation of his person. Irving, then, fails the test of Chalcedon. Cf. Bathrellos,
‘Sinlessness’, pp. 115–17; Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, p. 113.
5
CW 5, pp. 215–16.
6
Nantomah, ‘Jesus the God-Man’, p. 217 (Monophysitism); Dorries, Incarnational Christology,
pp. 364–70 (Eutychianism).
7
See ch. 2.1.1.
8
Incarnation, pp. 215–27.
158 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

effects in keeping with his will. In this case, Dods would be of one mind with
the fathers.9 If, though, Dods means that Christ’s humanity was inherently
immortal and incorruptible, so that his death required a miracle,10 then Dods
does subscribe to Monophysitism – specifically, to the extreme form known
as Aphthartodocetism.11 Should this be the case, the clash between Dods and
Irving would prove to be a contest of equal and opposite heresies.

5.1.2 Karl Barth

Barth’s CD I/2 criticizes the early church for failing to teach that Christ
assumed human nature in the fullness of its fallen, sinful state. It is ironic that
Barth cites Nyssen as one of two examples of this failing, for Nyssen strikingly
describes God’s Son as assuming our ‘filth’, our ‘sinful human soul’, our thorn-
cursed, straying, serpentine, ‘sinful nature’. Barth’s second example comes
from Pope Honorius I’s pronouncement that Christ assumed human nature as
created by God, not as vitiated by sin. Although this study has not investigated
Honorius, we note that his pronouncement echoes Pope Leo I’s First Tome,
which uses similar language to teach that the Son overcame original sin by the
virginal conception while condescending to bear sin’s consequences. Barth’s
own position has terminological similarities to that of Nyssen (and Irenaeus
and Cyril) and conceptual similarities to that of Honorius (and of all the
fathers surveyed in this study).12 The Swiss divine does differ from his patristic
forebears in denying a causal connection from Adam’s sin to our own and in
affirming an actualistic metaphysics.13

9
According to J. S. Romanides, response to V. C. Samuel, ‘One Incarnate Nature of God the Word’,
Greek Orthodox Theological Review 10.2 (Winter 1964–5), pp. 52–3 (52),
Most Fathers would rather say that the human nature of Christ was by nature mortal but not
by nature under the power or sentence of death and corruption which are the wages of sin. In
this sense even angels are by nature mortal. Only God is by nature immortal. It is for this reason
that the death of the Lord of Glory in the flesh was voluntary and not the wages of personal or
inherited sin.
10
Bruce, Humiliation, p. 261, warns against interpreting Dods in this latter sense.
11
On which heresy, see Bruce, Humiliation, pp. 58, 268; Weinandy, Likeness, p. 35, n. 39. Cf. McFarland,
In Adam’s Fall, p. 136, n. 30: ‘Insofar as [the Aphthartodocetists] denied that Christ’s human nature
had any natural susceptibility to suffering, while also maintaining that he willingly subjected himself
to it, their position is arguably not as discontinuous with standard defenses of Christ’s “unfallen”
human nature as it may first appear.’
12
Bromiley, ‘Reformers’, pp. 84–5, suggests that by CD III/2 Barth had moved closer to the traditional
view that he criticizes in CD I/2.
13
McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, pp. 206–13, 219–29. Cf. Jones, Humanity of Christ, p. 38.
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 159

5.1.3 T. F. Torrance and Colin Gunton

Unlike their continental mentor, Torrance and Gunton recognize antecedents
in the early church for the doctrine of Christ’s fallen flesh. They correctly
interpret Nazianzen and the other Greek fathers as claiming that, in the act
of assumption, God’s Son healed and sanctified the fallen humanity which
he assumed. While Gunton merely nods to the fathers, Torrance extensively
documents their support. His accusation of Tertullian, Augustine, Leo’s Tome,
and the Chalcedonian Definition as fomenters of the ‘Latin heresy’ of an
unfallen humanity in Christ, however, is problematic. True, the Latin fathers
do not use the language of fallenness or sinfulness as the Greeks sometimes
do, but conceptually both Latins and Greeks concur that Christ’s humanity
was fallen in his mother and regained in the Incarnation a sinlessness which is
prelapsarian in the sense of reflecting Edenic innocence, yet still postlapsarian
in the sense of suffering from many of the Fall’s effects.
Torrance’s historical reconstruction suffers from various inconsistencies.
For instance, he enlists support from Contra Apollinarium and Hilary of
Poitiers, despite the latter’s buffering of Christ’s soul from affliction and the
former’s insistence on Christ’s prelapsarian sinlessness in language as strong
as Leo’s Tome’s, if not more so. Likewise, Torrance critiques the Chalcedonian
Definition for not stating that Christ’s humanity was fallen. The Council of
Chalcedon asserted the normative authority of the original Creed of Nicaea,
the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, and, as mentioned above, Leo’s Tome.14
Neither of these earlier creeds speaks of Christ’s humanity as fallen, yet Torrance
does not critique them, while Leo’s Tome does ascribe to Christ the infirmities
inflicted by the Fall, yet suffers Torrance’s censure. Such inconsistencies
undermine the reliability of the ‘Latin heresy’ as a patristic paradigm, at least
through Chalcedon and as regards the status of Christ’s humanity vis-à-vis
the Fall. On this doctrine Torrance, like Gunton and other twentieth-century
theologians on various matters, presents Christian intellectual history in
terms of (good, non-Augustinian) Greek East versus (bad, Augustinian) Latin
West.15 These dualistic accounts have come under serious scrutiny recently, not

14
Cyril, Select Letters, p. xxxix.
15
Williams, Ideas (see my critique in ch 3 n. 3); Aulén, Christus Victor; G. E. Demacopoulos and
A. Papanikolaou, ‘Augustine and the Orthodox: “The West” in the East’, in Orthodox Readings of
Augustine (ed. G. E. Demacopoulos and A. Papanikolaou; Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary
160 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

least as employed by Torrance and Gunton.16 Although our own examination

has partitioned the fathers into Greek (Chapter 3) and Latin (Chapter 4),
repeatedly we have noted the interchange between the two wings of the church
so as to avoid portraying them as hermetically (or hermeneutically) sealed off
from one another.

5.1.4 Thomas Weinandy

Weinandy corrects Torrance’s patristic perspective both by demonstrating
consensus between the Christian East and Westerners like Tertullian,
Augustine, and Leo on Christ’s participation in Fall-consequent infirmities and
by acknowledging Hilary of Poitiers’ shortcoming in this regard. Yet Weinandy
is so intent on underscoring the fathers’ attributions of postlapsarian elements
to the Incarnation that, like Torrance, he fails to do justice to patristic use
of prelapsarian language for Christ’s sinlessness. Whereas Torrance reacts
against such language in Leo’s Tome, Weinandy successfully contextualizes
Leo’s statements but disagrees with Honorius’ pronouncement that, insofar as
it lacked the law of sin in the flesh, Christ’s humanity was unfallen.17 Weinandy
ignores similar ideas in Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Contra Apollinarium, thus
imitating Irving’s and Torrance’s lapsarian lopsidedness.

Press, 2008), pp. 11–40 (20–1, 27–8, 31–2, 37); Gunton, Promise, ch. 3; Gunton, The One, the Three
and the Many. Torrance’s narrative of doctrinal history as a whole is more nuanced: see J. Radcliff,
‘T.F. Torrance in the light of Stephen Holmes’ Critique of Contemporary Trinitarian Thought’,
Evangelical Quarterly 86.1 (2014), pp. 21–38.
16
On Eastern ‘physicalist-Incarnationist’ versus Western ‘juridical-redemption’ soteriologies:
Keating, Appropriation, pp. 289–93 (quotes from 290). On various East-versus-West political and
theological explanations of the Nestorian controversy: Fairbairn, Grace and Christology, pp. 6–11.
On Torrance’s ‘Latin heresy’ and other dualisms: D. Farrow, ‘T. F. Torrance and the Latin Heresy’,
First Things (December 2013), n.p. Cited 22 September 2016. Online: https://www.firstthings.com/
article/2013/12/t-f-torrance-and-the-latin-heresy; Radcliff, Thomas F. Torrance and the Church
Fathers, pp. 120–3, 138–48, 187–97. On Cappadocian ‘social trinitarianism’ versus Augustinian
‘monism’ (as claimed by Gunton, among others): M. R. Barnes, ‘Augustine in Contemporary
Trinitarian Theology’, TS 56.2 (1995), pp. 237–50; the whole of HTR 100.2 (April 2007), including L.
Ayres, ‘Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Introduction’, pp. 141–4; J. Behr, ‘Response to Ayres: The Legacies
of Nicaea, East and West’, pp. 145–52; K. Anatolios, ‘Yes and No: Reflections on Lewis Ayres, Nicaea
and Its Legacy’, pp. 153–8; B. Nausner, ‘The Failure of a Laudable Project: Gunton, the Trinity, and
Self-Understanding’, SJT 62.4 (2009), pp. 403–20; J. McNall, A Free Corrector: Colin Gunton and the
Legacy of Augustine (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015).
17
Weinandy, Likeness, pp. 35–7, incl. n. 41. McFarland, In Adam’s Fall, pp. 121, 134, n. 14, finds fault
with Weinandy’s interpretation of Aquinas. Weinandy’s view of a distancing of Christ’s humanity
from ours by medieval theologians seems generally accurate; cf. Adams, What Sort of Human
Nature?. Yet here Sturch’s observation is apt: many theologians of the past whose Christologies seem
overly rarefied still showed ‘a passionate (some might even say excessive) devotion, not to God the
Word, but to the human figure of Jesus’ (The Word and the Christ, p. 182).
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 161

5.1.5 The unfallenness theologians

Unlike the diversity of historical reconstructions among the modern fallenness
advocates, their unfallenness counterparts maintain a single narrative, which
seconds Barth’s: they claim that the orthodox view ever has been that God’s
Son assumed an unfallen humanity. Dods, Bruce, Mackintosh, and Macleod
all note a patristic tendency to downplay Christ’s historical humanity and
infirmities, a tendency which they see as evidence that the fathers were far
from ascribing a fallen, sinful humanity to him. Bruce and Mackintosh,
influenced as they are by modern kenoticism, are particularly critical of the
waxing eclipse of the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth throughout the patristic
and medieval periods in both the East and the West.
The unfallenness theologians are right to affirm the fathers’ consensus that,
from the womb, Christ’s humanity existed in a condition of sinlessness, which
some of them describe in prelapsarian terms. Yet, as this study has shown,
some Greek fathers allow the terms ‘fallen’ and ‘sinful’ to be used of his flesh,
and fathers both Greek and Latin (albeit haltingly for Hilary) attribute to him
not only outward but also inward infirmities, such as fear and grief. Here the
extensive patristic research of Torrance and Weinandy provides a valuable
corrective to the unfallenness representatives’ one-sided historical account.
For example, Weinandy’s contextualization of Leo’s prelapsarian statement
in his Tome, coupled with the Council of Chalcedon’s sanction of it as an
authoritative source, defeats Bruce’s objection that Leo and Chalcedon do not
address Christ’s human infirmities and their relationship to his deity and so
inaugurate an era of abstract Christologizing.18 Likewise, Torrance’s location
of the non-assumptus within the broader sweep of Greek fallenness teaching
counters the contention by all five unfallenness champions that Nazianzen had
in mind simply a morally neutral assumption of human mind by the Logos.
Dods, followed by Macleod, accuses Irving of Gnostic and Nestorian
proclivities. As noted in 5.1.1 above, this study concurs. Macleod also extends
the charge of Nestorianism to Torrance.19 There it sticks less well, for, as 1.3.2

18
Humiliation, pp. 65–8.
19
Dods, Incarnation, pp. viii–xi, 234–6, 285–8, 316–17, 326, 420–45, 452–9, 569–70, 73 (on Irving);
Macleod, Person of Christ, p. 228; Jesus is Lord, pp. 128–9 (on Irving and Torrance). Chiarot,
Unassumed, p. 164, also suggests ‘a latent Nestorianism’ in Torrance (cf. 209). By contrast (and
perhaps as a testament to the difficulty of Torrance’s thought), B. L. McCormack, ‘The Ontological
Presuppositions of Barth’s Doctrine of the Atonement’, in The Glory of the Atonement: Biblical,
162 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

of this study has discussed, Torrance envisages Christ as engaged in lifelong

combat with ‘our self-will’ and ‘our carnal mind’ as present in the rest of us,
not our purified mind and will as present in himself.20 Torrance’s designation
of Christ’s sinless humanity as ‘fallen’ reflects that term’s use by Nestorianism’s
arch-antagonist, Cyril of Alexandria. Besides Irving, none of the fallenness
proponents here studied depict schizophrenic friction within Christ; none
dichotomize the predicates of his personhood and human nature;21 and,
when speaking of Christ’s humanity, none use the term ‘sinful’ to refer to sin
per se, but only to its associates (e.g. temptation and the suffering of divine
judgement). Thus none of them share Irving’s condemnation as ‘Gnostorian’.22

5.1.6 Summary of findings concerning historical claims

In summary, the various versions of the early history of Christology here
canvassed are mutually corrective. Barth and the unfallenness advocates
rightly see Christ’s prelapsarian sinlessness affirmed across the early church
but miss the accompanying affirmation of his salvific solidarity with our
postlapsarian state. Weinandy (and, less accurately, Irving) do the opposite,
seeing what the aforementioned theologians miss and missing what they
see. Torrance combines the strengths and weaknesses of both the above
versions by postulating a pro-fallenness East versus an increasingly anti-
fallenness West. Based on the East–West polarity in his own historical
reconstruction, Gunton may be grouped with Torrance’s version; or, based
on his endorsement of In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh, he may be associated
with Weinandy’s version.
We also found mixed results concerning the heresies condemned by
the early church and, according to Torrance, the one countenanced in its
Latin half. Irving’s Gnostic and Nestorian tendencies are plausible; Dods’s

Historical, & Practical Perspectives: Essays in Honor of Roger Nicole (ed. C. E. Hill and F. A. James III;
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), pp. 346–66 (352, n. 9), sees a rarefied Apollinarianism in
Torrance.
20
Quotations from Incarnation, p. 118; Atonement, p. 440, respectively.
21
Gunton does call attention to Irving’s person–nature distinction in ‘Two Dogmas’, p. 369, and
Christ and Creation, p. 53, n. 13, but Gunton’s own practice does not follow Irving’s thoroughgoing
compartmentalization of the two with regard to sinfulness.
22
Kapic, ‘Assumption’, pp. 155–9, 164, and Davidson, ‘Pondering’, pp. 378–9, n. 16, 397, both raise the
question of Nestorianism in relation to fallenness advocates, including Irving, Barth, Torrance, and
Weinandy.
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 163

Aphthartodocetism is possible; the Nestorianism of the other fallenness

thinkers and the ‘Latin heresy’ of the fathers here surveyed are improbable.23
Having addressed the modern debaters’ historical claims, we turn to proposals
regarding theological taxonomy and terminology arising from our study.

5.2 Righting theology: Taxonomy

Just as the adequacy of the East-versus-West taxonomy used by Torrance and

Gunton has come under fire, so also has the fallenness-versus-unfallenness
taxonomy.24 We have seen the spectrum of thought of twenty theologians,
ancient and modern. We now evaluate and build upon two of the proposed
new taxonomies for the fallenness debate.

5.2.1 Sykes’ taxonomy

In a 1972 essay, Stephen W. Sykes presented a fourfold classification of views of
Christ’s humanity along with a representative of each view:

1. Christ assumed a humanity transformed at conception into a new sort of

humanity (Nyssen, as interpreted by Srawley’s 1906 JTS article)
2. Christ assumed humanity weakened by the Fall but not corrupted in
nature by it (R. L. Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation)
3. Christ assumed a humanity vitiated by all the effects of the Fall (Barth,
CD I/2:151–52; cf., though, IV/2:27–28)
4. Christ assumed original unfallen humanity (Leo’s Tome).25

The imprecision of Sykes’ taxonomy appears when we compare his placement

of Nyssen, Barth, and Leo with our study’s findings. Chapter 3.4 showed that
Nyssen holds that the sinful humanity assumed by the Logos was cleansed

23
Note that this judgement against Torrance’s ‘Latin heresy’ construct applies strictly to the fallenness
debate and the patristic era through Chalcedon. Cf. Radcliff, Thomas F. Torrance and the Church
Fathers, p. 193, who finds the whole construct too simplistic.
24
Kapic, ‘Assumption’, pp. 163–4; Hastings, ‘Pneumatological Christology’, pp. 287–90; Davidson,
‘Pondering’, p. 397; cf. Allen, The Christ’s Faith, p. 128.
25
S. W. Sykes, ‘The Theology of the Humanity of Christ’, in Christ Faith and History (ed. S. W. Sykes
and J. P. Clayton; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 53–72 (58–9; the wording of
the above taxonomy is mine).
164 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

at conception, so that Christ suffered no sinful passions, yet it remained

ἁμαρτικήν in that it was a Fall-affected humanity until its full deification in
the Resurrection. Likewise, Chapter 1.2 revealed that, for Barth, original sin
is unrepeated in the Incarnation; rather, as Sykes’ citation of CD IV/2 reflects,
Christ ever actualizes himself as our substitute under God’s judgement, hence
simultaneously ‘sinful’ (in accepting a sinner’s punishment) and sinless (in
doing so by God’s will). Lastly, Leo’s Tome teaches both Christ’s prelapsarian
sinlessness and his sharing our postlapsarian weaknesses. If treated as mutually
exclusive, totalizing explications, Sykes’ categories turn out to be too static
to capture the fullness of these theologians’ views of the Christ-event. These
categories may be rehabilitated, however, as potentially overlapping markers
of the ‘temporally indexed qualities of the humanity he assumed’26 at different
times within the entirety of that event.

5.2.2 Hastings’ taxonomy

Precisely by focusing on such ‘temporally indexed qualities’ and the temporal
transitions accompanying them, scholars lately have used John Calvin’s
Christology to pursue a way forward in the fallenness debate.27 Hastings
explains that, for Calvin, ‘the humanity which the Son received, was, in its
derivation from Mary, fallen’; by the Holy Spirit’s intervention, however, that
nature ‘was purified … as he was conceived’ so as to be free from inherited
guilt and sinful proclivities.28 Calvin understood such a humanity to be morally
unfallen – as ‘pure and undefiled as would have been true before Adam’s
fall’, according to the Institutes – while still suffering the amoral infirmities
brought by the Fall.29 In terms of Sykes’ categories, the humanity which God’s
Son made his own was in Category Three up to the moment of conception,
at which point it was transformed (as in Category One) so that, as regards

26
McFarland, In Adam’s Fall, pp. 124–5 (quote from latter page).
27
Hastings, ‘Pneumatological Christology’, pp. 287–90; Allen, ‘Calvin’s Christ’, pp. 394–5; Ahn,
‘Humanity of Christ’, p. 147.
28
Hastings, ‘Pneumatological Christology’, p. 287; but cf. Allen, ‘Calvin’s Christ’, pp. 388–400; idem,
The Christ’s Faith, pp. 132–5, who denies that Calvin teaches inherited guilt.
29
Kapic, ‘Assumption’, pp. 160–1, on the latter page quoting J. Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian
Religion (ed. J. T. McNeill; trans. F. L. Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 2.13.4 (italics
Kapic’s). Cf. Ahn, ‘Humanity of Christ’, pp. 145–7, 151–4; Allen, ‘Calvin’s Christ’, pp. 394–5; Hastings,
‘Pneumatological Christology’, pp. 286–7. Both Ahn and Hastings (or their editors) incorrectly cite
Institutes 2.13.4: Ahn, p. 151, gives it as 3.13.1; Hastings, p. 287, n. 35, gives it as 2.8.4.
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 165

the Fall’s moral effects, it became Category Four humanity, but as regards the
Fall’s amoral effects, Category Two. Hastings contrasts Calvin’s view with two
others: the view that Christ’s humanity was created ex nihilo and therefore
unfallen, as held by Menno Simons and Jonathan Edwards;30 and Irving’s,
Barth’s, and Torrance’s alleged view of ‘a gradual process, by which the person
of Christ (viewed as a whole person) is able to be obedient always, but by
overcoming a human nature which is not itself purified until the experience
of the sufferings of the Cross’.31 Hastings fairly describes Irving’s view (which
fits under Sykes’ Category Three)32 but incorrectly identifies it with Barth’s and
Torrance’s positions, which do depict Christ’s own human nature as purified
from conception onward.

5.2.3 A Sykes-Hastings taxonomy

A corrected and combined Sykes-Hastings taxonomy, when applied to the
twenty theologians covered in this study, yields the following results:

1. All but Weinandy concur that, prior to Christ’s conception, the human
nature which he was to assume existed in Mary in a state of original sin,
broadly defined, and of subjection to all the effects of the Fall (Sykes’
Category Three). Due to Weinandy’s faith in the Immaculate Conception,
for him Mary’s humanity inhabits Sykes’ Category Two, although her
parents and the rest of Jesus’ family line populate Category Three. For
Irving, as noted above, Christ’s humanity remains in Category Three
until death.
2. All but Irving and Weinandy hold that at the time of Christ’s conception,
his humanity was transformed (Sykes’ Category One). Of these, seventeen
would accept Hastings’ language of purification; Macleod prefers the
language of creation (ex virgine, not ex nihilo). Weinandy would relocate
the transformation to the time of Mary’s conception.

30
Other variations of this ‘heavenly flesh’ view have been held by some Gnostics and Marcionites
(Irenaeus, Haer. 1.6.1; Tertullian, Carn. Chr. 1.16-17); Apollinaris, allegedly (see ch 3.2.2 and 3.3);
and some Pietists (McFarland, ‘Fallen or Unfallen?’, p. 404, n. 18).
31
Hastings, ‘Pneumatological Christology’, pp. 288–9 (quote from former page); he adds another
category, involving pneumatology, which does not concern us here.
32
McFarlane, Christ and the Spirit, pp. 138–47, cited in D. Rainey, ‘Edward Irving and the Doctrine of
the Humanity of Christ: “The Method Is By Taking Up the Fallen Humanity”’ (paper presented at
the annual meeting of the Wesleyan Theological Society, Anderson, Ind., 6 March 2009), p. 10.
166 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

3. All but Irving hold that, throughout Christ’s earthly life, his humanity
suffered the Fall’s amoral weaknesses but not its moral corruption (Sykes’
Category Two). In Hilary’s case, and possibly in Dods’s, this belief in
Christ’s infirmities is attenuated – severely so, for Hilary.
4. All but Irving teach that Christ’s humanity was free from original sin and
guilty propensities from at least the moment of his conception (or from
the moment of his mother’s conception, in Weinandy’s case).33 This is
what Calvin, the modern unfallenness advocates, and the ancient fathers
mean when they employ prelapsarian language with respect to Christ’s
flesh, and it is in this sense that Sykes’ Category Four must be applied.
Modern fallenness advocates may resist the terminology of unfallenness,
but at the level of its intention, their doctrine harmonizes with it. As
pro-fallenness theologian R. Michael Allen has observed, ‘To some
degree, then, the fallenness position simply insists on a logical distinction
between Christ’s assumption of flesh and the Spirit’s sanctification of
such flesh, whereas the unfallenness position insists that assumption
and sanctification are cotemporaneous and, furthermore, logically
synonymous.’34

The usage above of a fresh taxonomy provides insight into the underlying
consensus among the Greek and Latin fathers, modern unfallenness
proponents, and most of the fallenness thinkers surveyed in this study. The two
most consistent outliers are Weinandy and Irving. Weinandy stands close to the
consensus but defers some of its elements from Christ’s to Mary’s conception.
Irving, though, deviates radically from the consensus. The association of his
name with other fallenness theologians, whether done by themselves or their
opponents, serves as a red herring regarding the fundamental differences
between him and them. Another distraction from the consensus is the
language of fallenness and unfallenness itself. To a consideration of these and
related terms we now turn.

33
Thus when K. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology Volume 1, The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2015), p. 217, comments that ‘Barth and Irving do not persuade … in their rejection of
Christ’s absolute sinlessness’, she misreads Barth but not Irving.
34
The Christ’s Faith, p. 130, n. 105 (italics his). He continues, ‘Yet cotemporaneous action fails to
sustain the ontological relation between Mary’s fallen humanity and Christ’s inherited human
nature, a concern which seems to require a logical (if not temporal) ordering.’ Cf. Baillie, God Was in
Christ, p. 17, who suggests that the fallenness debate involves ‘an unnecessary and unreal theological
dilemma’.
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 167

5.3 Righting theology: Terminology

The problem of definitions underlies the whole fallenness debate.35 What is

meant when theologians assert that God’s Son ‘assumed’ a humanity that was
‘fallen’, ‘sinful’, or their antonyms, and might clearer terminology bring the
debate closer to resolution? In what follows, we assess each of these terms.

5.3.1 ‘Assumed’
In the mid-twentieth century, Donald Baillie surveyed the terrain of the
fallenness debate and found it beset by a terminological fog. He singled
out the phrases ‘fallen human nature’ and ‘assumption of human nature’ as
problematic.36 We shall address the latter phrase first before dealing with the
former phrase below. The term ‘assumed’ and similar words, such as ‘took’ and
‘received’, describe the action of the Logos in initiating the hypostatic union
with human nature. Ambiguity arises from the fact that these terms may be
applied to Christ’s human nature in either of two conditions: the condition
out of which he assumed it or the condition into which he assumed it. Thus
Athanasius, for instance, can write without contradiction both that the Logos
took enslaved, errant flesh and that he received his body from his mother as
a pure temple and sacerdotal robe,37 for the Alexandrian is considering two
different aspects of the same compound event of the assumption. Fallenness
advocates may wish to seize on the former of Athanasius’ statements and
unfallenness champions on the latter, but both are gripping opposite halves
of the same whole. Given the consensual taxonomy established above, a claim
like, ‘The Son assumed depraved human nature,’ ought to be acceptable to the
most ardent Protestant unfallenness proponent – so long as it is understood
that this is the condition whence, not whither, the Son took it. (For Catholic
theologians, Marian dogma would complicate acceptance of such a claim.)
Likewise, fallenness supporters must recognize that when their unfallenness
counterparts speak of the Word’s taking unfallen flesh, this does not require
belief in the Immaculate Conception, a new act of ex nihilo creation, a

35
Kapic, ‘Assumption’, p. 164.
36
Baillie, God Was in Christ, p. 17.
37
See ch. 3.2.1.
168 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

pre-existent humanity of Christ, or any similar device.38 It only need mean

that humanity which in Mary exists as fallen into sin has been relieved of
that condition in her Son’s act of Incarnation.

5.3.2 ‘Unfallen’
Before discussing the attribution of unfallenness specifically to Christ’s
humanity, two preliminary objections to prelapsarian language in general call
for comment. First, those who deny that humanity ever existed in an unfallen
state may protest that there was no ‘pre-’ before the lapsus; the Incarnation
presents us with a new, not a renewed, humanity. In response, one may note
that the biblical metanarrative certainly depicts a prelapsarian state, however
briefly, and its logical and theological priority to the Fall, if not chronological
priority, is crucial to avoiding metaphysical monism or dualism.39 Even if
there were no historical time during which humanity was unfallen, the term
‘prelapsarian’ could still be permissible either as a metaphor or as a (theo)
logical abstraction.40 Nonetheless, belief in a historical Fall best fits with an
anti-Gnostic faith which affirms history as the pre-eminent arena of divine
revelation.41 Nor is such belief incompatible with current scientific theory
regarding early human history, so long as one eschews an overly literalistic or
perfectionistic reading of the opening chapters of Genesis.42 In the dialogue
with science, the model put forward by Irenaeus, the Cappadocians, and Bruce
of the Fall as a deviation from the divinely intended developmental trajectory is
more fruitful than Athanasius’ and Augustine’s model of the Fall as a plummet
from an original human perfection (or near-perfection).
Secondly, it has been claimed that the discourse of prelapsarianism presumes
a theological method which moves from Adam to Christ, Creation (and Fall) to

38
For example, ‘a Platonic real perfect human nature different from the actual fallen human nature
that we now have’, as suggested in the critique of the unfallenness view in Eugenio, Communion with
God, p. 43.
39
But T. A. Noble, ‘Original sin and the Fall: definitions and a proposal’, pp. 113–16, follows Williams,
Ideas, in arguing that a historical Fall is necessary to skirt those two metaphysical conclusions. Cf.
M. Shuster, The Fall and Sin: What We Have Become as Sinners (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), pp.
5, 6, 8–12.
40
See for example, M. F. Wiles, ‘Does Christology Rest on a Mistake?’, Christ Faith and History, pp. 3–12.
41
See J. N. Oswalt, The Bible among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature? (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2009).
42
Cf. P. R. Baelz, ‘A Deliberate Mistake?’, in Christ Faith and History, pp. 13–34; Shuster, The Fall and
Sin, chs 1–4; R. J. Berry and T. A. Noble (eds), Darwin, Creation and the Fall; Johnson, Humanity,
pp. 12–13; and ch. 2.2.4 of this volume.
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 169

Redemption, rather than the reverse, as in Torrance (and Barth).43 The concern
here is that such theologizing starts elsewhere than with Christ and so forces
him into a presuppositional Procrustean bed instead of respecting him as the
unconstrained Lord and sole revelatory Word of God and so beginning with
him. There is much merit in this Barthian concern. Again, though, the biblical
metanarrative must be respected, including the progress of revelation which
it records. In structuring its scriptural canon, the early church did not place
the Gospels before Genesis. On the other hand, neither did patristic exegetes
simply move from Adam to Christ, from a Unitarian account of Creation and
Fall to a tardily Trinitarian Redemption story. As sampled in this study,44 they
moved from the pre-incarnate Christ to Adam to the incarnate Christ, from
the Son’s presence to humanity in Genesis to his union with humanity in the
Gospels. Likewise, it is possible for our notions of a prelapsarian state to be
refined rather than replaced by the Incarnation.
Having defended the use of unfallen or prelapsarian terminology generally,
we now address its application to Christ. Such talk, as noted previously, may
make it sound as if his is a human nature utterly unaffected by the Fall or
unconnected with the fallen human race (such as in Simons’ and Edwards’
view as discussed by Hastings). The ‘pre-’ in ‘prelapsarian’ may even give the
impression that his humanity existed before the Fall. None of these views,
however, is standard in unfallenness tradition, which asserts that Christ
drew his humanity from his mother and endured the infirmities which beset
postlapsarian life.45 Considering the potential for unfallenness language to be
misunderstood, Bruce McCormack has proffered ‘restored’ as the adjective of
choice over ‘unfallen’ with reference to Calvin’s view of Christ’s humanity.46
To speak of Christ’s human nature as becoming in its assumption a ‘restored’,
‘redeemed’, ‘sanctified’, or ‘uprighted’ human nature communicates something

43
Eugenio, Communion, pp. 43–4.
44
Chapter 3.1.1 and 3.2 (introduction).
45
Kapic, ‘Assumption’, p. 164. According to Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, pp. 115–16, and McFarland
In Adam’s Fall, pp. 121–2, 135–6, n. 27, the unfallenness tradition typically has taught that Christ
freely bore the effects of fallenness (i.e. infirmities) but not their cause, fallenness itself (construed in
terms of original sin). See also ch. 2 of this study.
46
B. L. McCormack, For Us and Our Salvation: Incarnation and Atonement in the Reformed Tradition
(n.p.: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1993), p. 18, quoted in Allen, ‘Calvin’s Christ’, p. 395. Cf.
Kapic, Communion with God, p. 101. McCormack is responding to the potential misreading of
unfallenness as creation ex nihilo; Kapic, to the caricature of a prelapsarian Christ ‘completely alien
and oblivious to the painful realities of a fallen world’.
170 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

of the dynamism of the Sykes-Hastings taxonomy in ways that the static- and
perfectionistic-sounding terms ‘unfallen’ and ‘prelapsarian’ do not.

5.3.3 ‘Fallen’
Like its privative, the term ‘fallen’ cries out for careful delineation. For instance,
Kevin Chiarot has bemoaned Torrance’s ‘lack of a crisp definition of “fallen
human nature”’.47 One such ‘crisp definition’ comes, appropriately, from Oliver
Crisp: fallenness means sinfulness – specifically, possession of original sin.
Crisp’s definition relies on the traditional Western view, which, he claims,
reduces to unorthodox nonsense any attempt to distinguish fallenness from
sinfulness.48 For Christ to have a fallen humanity would be to have a humanity
inclined towards sin, which itself would be sinful because it would be deviant
from God’s norm for human nature. In this case, Christ would be ‘loathsome to
God’.49 Crisp grants that ‘Christ’s sinless nature was affected by the Fall without
actually being fallen’ in that he ‘possessed the symptoms and effects of being
sinful in terms of moral and physical weakness, without himself possessing the
sinful human nature that gives rise to these effects’.50 Crisp represents the general
stance of this study’s unfallenness theologians, as demonstrated in Chapter 2.51
Irving would disagree with Crisp on the definition of original sin but would
concur that fallenness entails sinfulness, including inclinations towards sin,
which are themselves already sinful. He would challenge Crisp’s separation of
the effects of the Fall from their cause, sin. Instead, both the effects and the cause
are bound up in the indivisible reality of fallenness. It is precisely by bearing and
overcoming the ‘moral and physical weaknesses’ which he has in common with
the rest of us, along with the sin which underlies them, that Christ redeems us.52

47
Chiarot, Unassumed, p. 199.
48
Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, pp. 93, 106–8, 115, 117.
49
Ibid., pp. 105–6, 108–14. Variations on the quote appear multiple times in these pages.
50
Ibid., pp. 115–16. Ahn, ‘Humanity of Christ’, pp. 149, 151–3, falsely claims that Crisp and other
unfallenness advocates (with the exception of Calvin) deny that Christ’s humanity possessed
infirmities, including mortality. Ahn’s article suffers from severe disengagement from unfallenness
literature.
51
For a concise book-length rebuttal to Crisp using T. F. Torrance as a test case, see D. J. Cameron,
Flesh and Blood: A Dogmatic Sketch Concerning the Fallen Nature View of Christ’s Human Nature
(Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016).
52
Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, p. 114, claims that if Christ’s humanity had original sin, it would
contaminate his divinity. Irving argues the reverse: the divine Spirit ever enabled Christ to suppress
his flesh’s wickedness and convert its motions into God-pleasing ones. See ch. 1.1.1 of this study.
Allen, The Christ’s Faith, p. 127, n. 91, critiques Crisp’s view as implying an incipient Monophysitism.
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 171

The other fallenness theologians here surveyed agree with Crisp that the
cause (original sin) and its effects may be uncoupled but insist that the term
‘fallenness’ applies to the effects even absent their cause. Thus Barth and
Torrance particularly relate being fallen to being treated as a sinner by God
and humanity, whether or not one actually is a sinner. Gunton speaks of the
biological and sociological conditioning of the world towards disorder, to
which even a person in perfect relationship with God – as Christ was – may
contribute. Weinandy stresses the full solidarity in human afflictions, which
even a non-concupiscent Saviour experiences. For these scholars, original
sin is a constituent of fallenness but not necessarily or exclusively so. They
distinguish between ‘metaphysical’ and ‘moral aspects of fallenness’.53 This
distinction recalls Irenaeus’ affirmation of Christ’s ‘fallen’ flesh in relation to
death but denial that he ever ‘fell’ under the power of sin, as well as Cyril’s
testimony that the Lord took a ‘fallen’ body but purified its proclivities.
The fact that some Greek fathers did use the language of fallenness
relativizes Crisp’s and the other unfallenness proponents’ appeal to historical
usage. The definition of fallenness which equates it with (original) sinfulness
is not the only one available from church tradition. Furthermore, the Sykes-
Hastings taxonomy above has exposed that, Irving excepted, ancient and
modern users of fallenness language are in harmony with those who do not
use it regarding the issues of Christ’s liberty from original sin and fraternity
in human infirmities. One could argue, then, that the usage or non-usage of
fallenness terminology is a matter of adiaphora, not anathemas.
Irving’s exception, though, signals a concern: fallenness advocates
themselves do not present a unified definition of the term. On its own, this
leads to confusion. This confusion is deepened by Irving’s fallenness comrades’
promotion of him, although his definition differs from theirs. Exacerbating the
situation is that the unfallenness tradition has a unified definition of fallenness –
Crisp’s – which can be applied to Christ only at the risk of heterodoxy. Worse
yet, Irving’s definition hews closely enough to the unfallenness tradition’s as
to overshadow him with suspicion of heterodoxy and render the rest of the
fallenness camp guilty by (sometimes invited) association.54

53
Hastings, ‘Pneumatological Christology’, p. 286 (italics his).
54
See for example, Macleod, Jesus is Lord, ch. 5.
172 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

Regardless of exact definition, speech about Christ’s ‘fallen humanity’ may

evoke the opposite misunderstanding to talk of his ‘unfallen humanity’. He may
be viewed as so thoroughly enmeshed in sin’s web as to be one of us indeed,
but too much so to save. But the humanity of Christ is less prelapsarian or
postlapsarian than exlapsarian.55 Here again McCormack’s language of Christ’s
‘restored’ human nature and similar adjectives such as ‘redeemed’, ‘sanctified’,
or ‘uprighted’ commend themselves as alternatives, ones whose implications
for our own humanity will be explored subsequently.

5.3.4 ‘Sinful’
Modern unfallenness and fallenness theologians alike tend to use the term
‘sinful’ as interchangeable with ‘fallen’ and either deny or apply both terms
to Christ’s humanity. Bruce is the exception: in his later writings, he allows
that Christ had ‘sinful flesh’ yet was unfallen. The other unfallenness advocates
and Irving use ‘sinful’ in its most straightforward sense, ‘possessing sin’. Barth,
Torrance, and Weinandy use ‘sinful’ to mean ‘suffering the effects of sin,
whether possessing sin or not’. This usage has a precedent in Nyssen. Bruce
and Gunton can use ‘sinful’ for ‘being solicited by sin’.
Bruce, Gunton, and Dods agree that sinfulness and fallenness are, strictly
speaking, properties of persons, not their physical natures. More recently,
McFarland has distinguished between sinfulness as an attribute of persons
and fallenness (in the fallenness advocates’ sense of the suffering of the Fall’s
effects) as an attribute of their natures. He sees this distinction as disabling us
from blaming our nature for our personal sinfulness while also enabling the
second person of the Trinity to assume a fallen nature in common with ours
without thereby becoming sinful.56
Setting aside these four thinkers’ differences on the term ‘fallen’, their
consensus concerning the term ‘sinful’ commends itself as promoting accurate,
responsible discourse. To describe as ‘sinful’ the suffering of infirmities such
as hunger, weariness, illness, loneliness, or sorrow and the temptations which

55
Cf. Allen, The Christ’s Faith: ‘In fact, the occurrence [of the constant hallowing of Christ’s flesh] may
best be described as the Word’s sanctification of a human nature from sinful flesh, albeit without
morphing the humanity of Christ (post-conception) into a tertium quid’ (131); Christ’s humanity
was ‘sanctified from fallenness’ (132; all italics his).
56
McFarland, In Adam’s Fall, pp. 126–31. Sumner, ‘Fallenness’, seconds McFarland’s distinction.
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 173

accompany these infirmities,57 as well as the fleshly body in which we experience

all the above, is to muddle cause and effect, means and ends, and risk fostering
doctrines closer to those of Job’s friends, Gnosticism, or Buddhism58 than
to orthodox Christianity. Granted, there is apostolic warrant for the phrase
‘sinful flesh’ (Rom. 8.3), but such an expression must be used carefully: Paul
had a reputation for occasionally confusing his readers (2 Pet. 3.15-16), as the
contentious exegetical history of Rom. 8.3 indicates.59 Responsible theological
discourse seeks to explicate biblical phraseology rather than simply repeating
it when there is a strong likelihood that simple repetition will engender serious
misunderstanding.60 Thus the 1984 edition of the New International Version
rendered Rom. 8.3’s ‘likeness of sinful flesh’ as ‘likeness of sinful man’, while the
New Living Translation interprets it as ‘a body like the bodies we sinners have’.61

5.3.5 ‘Sinless’
The Sykes-Hastings taxonomy has revealed agreement among the fathers
and modern debaters, except for Irving, that Christ’s sinlessness must not be
restricted to his divine nature or to the non-committal of actual sin; the roots
of his humanity must be free from sin. This fact should allay the fears of those
like Crisp who believe that fallenness proponents necessarily compromise
Christ’s sinlessness.62 If, as urged above, the usage of ‘sinful’ is narrowed, then
the usage of ‘sinless’ is widened. Yet scripture itself limits Christ’s sinlessness:
the Sinless One was ‘made … to be sin’ (2 Cor. 5.21) and ‘bore our sins in his
body on the tree’ (1 Pet. 2.24), coming ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh and for

57
For example, Weinandy, Likeness, p. 18.
58
Cf. Machida, ‘Jesus, Man of Sin’.
59
Cf. chs 1.1.2, 1.2.1, 1.3.3, 1.5.2; 2.1.2, 2.2.4, 2.3.1, 2.5.1; 3.1.3, 3.2.1-2, 3.4, 3.5; 4.1.2, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4.2,
4.5.2.
60
For example, the Nicene use of homoousios to clarify the New Testament’s sonship language for
Christ; the use of gender-inclusive language in various contemporary Bible translations (or, in the
ESV’s case, gender-inclusive footnotes).
61
Cf. Noble, Holy Trinity: Holy People, p. 176, who equates Rom. 8.3’s ‘sinful flesh’ with ‘our sinful
human race’.
62
The inconsistency of Johnson, Humanity, on this point bears noting. He describes two definitions
of sin, one which sees it as one’s volitional rebellion against God and one which sees it as anything
contrary to God’s will. In order to retain the term ‘original sin’, Johnson chooses the second definition
(11, 23). He depicts the state of fallenness as a state of original sin (22–5). When he asserts that
Christ had a fallen human nature, however, Johnson claims that this does not compromise Christ’s
sinlessness because he never volitionally rebelled against God (25–7, 33–5; cf. 207). Here Johnson
has switched hamartiologies in midstream. Shortly later he admits that, on his view, Christ had
original sin (43; cf. 119), but then denies that Christ needed purification from it (49).
174 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

sin’ (Rom. 8.3). These are the very passages upon which Irving established
his position, but they can be incorporated into various views which avoid
his extremes and which align with the consensus revealed by the Sykes-
Hastings taxonomy. Particularly broad-based is the interpretation that Christ
was counted counterfactually as sinful through identification with sinners.
This interpretation certainly is not simply ‘forensic’, as though an angel or
asteroid randomly were selected to stand in for sinful humanity. Instead,
the consensual teaching sees an ontological foundation for Christ’s forensic
(or, more biblically, cultic) identification with sinners: God’s Son takes our
common nature, restoring it from sin upon assumption so that he can stand
as the Sinless One for the sinful many, the Sinless One treated as sinful so that
the sinful may be treated as sinless, the Sinless One actively overcoming sin so
that the sinful may be delivered from its sway.63

5.3.6 A case study as a summary

Harry Johnson records a debate at a World Council of Churches committee
meeting, which underscores the need for consensual definitions of the above
terms or at least recognition of diversity in their usage. At the meeting,
Torrance proposed, ‘We need to take more seriously that the Word of God
assumed our sarx, i.e. our fallen humanity (not one immaculately conceived)
and in so doing hallowed it.’ In response, Methodist theologian Albert Outler
‘pointed out that Jesus Christ was “yet without sin.” Was humanity therefore
fallen on purpose? Is humanity sinful in itself?’ Russian Orthodox patristic
scholar Georges Florovsky likewise protested, ‘If the divine assumes human
nature, how can this nature be anything but sinless?’64 Here communication
broke down because of lack of clarity concerning the meanings of ‘assumed’
and ‘fallen’ and their relationships to ‘sinful’ and ‘sinless’ (and, implicitly,
‘unfallen’). If the above discussion of these terms were taken into account, it
would move the fallenness debate past the communicative impasse exemplified
in the WCC meeting.

63
This interpretation features in Barth, Torrance, the unfallenness theologians, Nazianzen, Cyril,
Augustine, and Leo.
64
Faith and Order Commission Paper, No. 23, in Minutes of the Working Committee, July 1956,
Herrenalb, Germany, Commission on Faith and Order, World Council of Churches, quoted in Johnson,
Humanity, pp. 172–3.
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 175

5.4 Further implications

If both fallenness and unfallenness theologians were to acknowledge their

common ground and clarify their terminology, what would remain for them
to discuss? Much, in point of fact. The following is a sampling of areas in which
the implications of Christ’s purifying assumption of fallen human nature
require to be further explored.

5.4.1 Mariology
Any development in Christology carries special implications for Mariology.
Torrance raised the issue of the Immaculate Conception in the WCC meeting
described above. Historically, Protestant fallenness proponents from Irving
forward have viewed this dogma as a misguided attempt to shield the all-
holy Son of God from contact with original sin. Such quarantining runs
counter to Jesus’ modus operandi in the Gospels: he touches the unclean, eats
with sinners, traverses impure territories (e.g. Samaria), and is baptized and
crucified in solidarity with the wicked, but rather than being contaminated
by these contacts, he brings healing, hallowing power to bear in each case. As
we have seen, this is precisely what the patristic and contemporary consensus
envisages as happening in the Virgin’s womb when the Logos assumed defiled
human nature. Yet the impulse towards affirming the Immaculate Conception
has at least as much to do with promoting Mary’s purity as Christ’s.65
Weinandy has demonstrated that it is possible to confess both the Immaculate
Conception and Christ’s assumption of ‘sinful flesh’. Whether it is theologically
responsible to confess both, however, or whether the former interferes with
the soterio-logic of the latter by buffering Christ from sanctifying contact
with original sin, is a matter for further discussion.
Another implication of the fallenness debate for Mariology touches on the
delicate topic of Mary’s virginity in partu and the alleged impassibility of her

65
‘It is important to remember that the immaculate conception is formulated not to preserve Mary
(and therefore Christ as the inheritor of her humanity) from original sin. Rather, it is founded on
an argument from “fittingness” (i.e. it is fitting that a sinless Son should have a sinless mother).’ –
T. Perry, Mary for Evangelicals: Toward an Understanding of the Mother of Our Lord (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), p. 280, n. 8; cf. 187–203; S. J. Boss, ‘The Development of the Doctrine
of Mary’s Immaculate Conception’, in Mary: The Complete Resource (ed. S. J. Boss; London:
Continuum, 2007), pp. 207–35; Farrow, ‘T. F. Torrance and the Latin Heresy’.
176 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

delivery of the Christ-child. Attempting to reclaim this ancient teaching for

Protestant evangelicals, Tim Perry suggests, ‘If Jesus stands alongside rather
than beneath Adam, then it seems reasonable to assume that he stands outside
the curse that has fallen on all Adam’s sons and daughters, including pain in
childbirth’ (Gen 3:16).66 Perry’s logic clashes with the consensual evangel of a
Saviour who assumes Adamic flesh and suffers its curse in order to re-create
humanity. If his earthly life ended with sweat, thorns, and death reminiscent
of the Edenic curse on Adam, it would be strange if that life began without the
birth pangs inflicted on Eve.

5.4.2 Hamartiology
In various volumes on hamartiology over the past thirty years, the details
of Christ’s earthly experience (e.g. his emotions, the acts which he commits
and those which he omits) play no normative role in shaping the doctrine
of sin. Rather, various biblical teachings are woven together with strands of
theological, philosophical, political, sociological, psychological, and literary
discourse to produce a mesh so fine that no human being or act may slip
through the net of depravity. If these hamartiologies were to be applied to the
Jesus of the Gospels, it is unclear how he himself could escape the charge of
sin, but instead he is presumed innocent and exempted from examination.
The result is that orthodoxy is upheld – we are convicted as sinners, Christ
is presented as the sinless, sin-loosing Saviour – but at the price of special
pleading.67 What follows are some general aspects of Christ’s earthly experience
which have a bearing on hamartiology.
Hebrews 4.15-16 teaches that Christ ‘in every respect has been tempted as
we are, yet without sin’ and so can both sympathize with and support us in
our trials. Much of the friction underlying the fallenness debate comes from

66
Perry, Mary for Evangelicals, pp. 281–2. This belief first appears in the second-century Ascension
of Isaiah 11.2-16; Odes of Solomon 19.6-9; and Protevangelium of James 19–20 (Perry, Mary for
Evangelicals, pp. 123–8).
67
McFarland, In Adam’s Fall; Shuster, The Fall and Sin; C. Gestrich, The Return of Splendor in the World:
The Christian Doctrine of Sin and Forgiveness (trans. D. W. Bloesch; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997);
C. Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995);
D. L. Smith, With Willful Intent: A Theology of Sin (Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1994); B. Ramm, Offense to
Reason: The Theology of Sin (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985); and, to a somewhat lesser degree,
M. E. Biddle, Missing the Mark: Sin and Its Consequences in Biblical Theology (Nashville: Abingdon,
2005). For a step in the right direction, see H. Connolly, Sin (London: Continuum, 2002).
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 177

the perceived tension between Christ’s sympathy and his sinlessness. How
can he truly sympathize if he never sinned even in thought or desire? What
can he know, for instance, of the alcoholic’s struggle to resist the lure of the
bottle? On the other hand, how can he truly be sinless if he felt any attraction
at all towards that with which he was tempted? Were his agonized pleas in
Gethsemane mere playacting? Or again: How can he truly sympathize with
me if he did not experience the temptations peculiar to my precise social,
economic, political, historical, ethnic, genderal, or temperamental situation?
To adapt Rosemary Ruether’s famous query, can a male Saviour sympathize
with Mary Magdalene, or even Theresa May?68 On the other hand, how can he
truly be sinless if he existed as one enmeshed within the systemic evils endemic
to his own particular social, economic, political, and historical situations? In
advising the paying of taxes to Rome, in filling his followers’ nets with fish, was
he not complicit in cruelty to the people and animals of Palestine?69
A perfectionism of sympathy would require that Christ become a sinner –
indeed, that he assume into union with himself every last sinner in history.70 A
perfectionism of sinlessness would demand that no Incarnation occur, but that
the Logos, like the Supreme Being of Gnosticism, maintain a distance from the
world in order to remain untainted by it. The Christological consensus which
we have identified steers between both these extremes, but its implications for
hamartiology require to be worked out satisfactorily. These include an analysis
of the qualities common to all encounters with temptation – the ‘transcendentals
of temptation’, so to speak71 – such that the experience of a particular range of
temptations by a unique individual (in this case, Jesus) grants that individual
a measure of insight sufficient for sympathizing with all others’ temptations.
Another line of inquiry concerns the distinction between sinful and sinless
(i.e. guilty and innocent) passions and their relation to Christ’s humanity. The

68
Cf. Sykes, ‘Theology of the Humanity of Christ’, p. 61.
69
As Davidson, ‘Pondering’, p. 372, asks, if Christ ‘belonged in a specific web of social relations and a
particular context of political and economic realities, was he not implicated in the structural defects
and injustices of that environment?’
70
Such a polyhypostatic union would be hypothetically possible on a Nestorian model of the
Incarnation. Adams, What Sort of Human Nature?, pp. 38–9, notes that Bonaventure entertains, then
refutes, the notion that the Logos should have assumed fallen Adam himself. She gives additional
reasons for rejecting the notion (39) while herself proposing an ‘Incarnation into a human nature
that not only suffers but perpetrates horrors’ (!) (98) – a proposal further developed in her Christ
and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
71
Cf. 1 Cor. 10.13.
178 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

common qualities of temptation correspond to certain common qualities of

human nature, such as the needs for and related cravings for sustenance, rest,
shelter, companionship, and meaning. Traditional hamartiology has taught that
the Fall precipitated a disordering of these cravings, as well as, perhaps, the
introduction of new cravings (such as libido in Augustine’s view). Yet theologians
such as Nazianzen and Bruce have ascribed a degree of disorderliness even to
prelapsarian passions. Even if it is allowed that Christ suffered no sinful passions,
exactly what is being excluded needs to be clearly identified: certain objects of
desire (e.g. Peter’s wife)? Certain degrees of desire (e.g. feeling not just sorrow
but overwhelming sorrow)? Certain sorts of desire (e.g. longing for recognition
or revenge)?72 Certain durations of desire (e.g. deliberating whether to turn
stones into bread and deciding against it rather than spontaneously dismissing
the temptation)? Various combinations of the above? Would any degree of Fall-
consequent disorder in Christ’s passions render him sinful, or would culpability
depend on what he did with them? Whatever the answers, care must be taken
to ground them in careful exegesis of the biblical record.73
Much the same may be said regarding Christ’s absence of guilt in relation
to the sin-stained systems in which his earthly life was embedded. Where
are the boundaries between sinless and sinful participation in such systems?
How does the particularity of Christ’s mission affect which sinful structures
he explicitly condemns (the Temple establishment) and which he does not
(Rome)? What of, for example, his shocking lack of honour towards the
family system, including his own (e.g. Mt. 8.21-22; 12.46-50; 19.29)? Christ’s
sinless life in a human nature conditioned by the Fall provides a model for
understanding his sinless life in a world of systems conditioned by the Fall.

5.4.3 Sanctification
The value of a thoroughly Christologically informed hamartiology lies
not merely nor even primarily in providing a greater consistency between
doctrines within one’s overarching theological system. Calibrating one’s
understanding of sin to Christ’s earthly life has significant relevance for one’s
doctrine of Christian sanctification. It bears underscoring that the biblical

72
Recall how Dods (ch. 2.1.1) and Bruce (2.2.3) differentiate holy desires from sinful desires.
73
Kapic, ‘Assumption’, p. 165 (Point 5); Davidson, ‘Pondering’, pp. 378–82 (including his cautionary
note on the lattermost page that such a line of inquiry may ultimately prove futile), 398.
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 179

texts which most emphatically assert Christ’s sinlessness do so in the context

of summoning his followers to sinlessness.74
Thus 2 Cor. 5.21 describes the ‘wondrous exchange’ in which God ‘made him
to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of
God’. To be God’s righteousness, though, has definite lifestyle implications both
for the apostles, whose integrity appears in their ‘purity, … patience, kindness,
… genuine love … [and] truthful speech’ (6.6-7) while ministering amid
hardships (6.1-13), as well as for the Corinthian church, which must avoid any
contaminating compromise of its loyalty to God (6.14-16) but instead must
pursue entire sanctification (6.17–7.1). The Letter to the Hebrews presents
Christ as the high priest who remained sinless under testing (4.15) and whose
purity perfectly reconciles us to God (7.26-28) precisely in order to motivate
its original recipients to remain faithful under testing and avoid re-alienating
themselves from God by apostasy (2.1-3; 3.6–4.2; 5.11–6.8; 10.26-31; 12.25).75
They are to cast aside sin and follow the example of Jesus’ fidelity (12.1-3).
Similar is 1 Peter’s defence of Christ’s innocence in the midst of elevating him
both as the spotless lamb whose death has redeemed his people (1.18-19) and
as an example of non-retaliatory, righteous suffering for beleaguered believers
to imitate (2.19-23; cf. 4.1, 12-19). Finally, the Johannine writings depict Christ
as the guiltless Son who frees sin’s slaves (Jn 8.34-36, 46); as the teacher who
instructs his disciples to reflect his obedient love for his Father, which excludes
any hold on his life by Satan (Jn 14.15-31); as the blameless one who atones and
intercedes for the world (Jn 1.29, 36; 1 Jn 2.1-2); and as the sin-free pattern for
our ‘walk’ (1 Jn 2.6), purification (1 Jn 3.3), and cessation from sin (1 Jn 3.5-10).
None of the above should be taken to imply that Christians may achieve
a state of absolute sinlessness in the present age. Believers’ freedom from sin
will always be analogous to, not equal to, Christ’s own.76 Nor may Christian
sanctification be reduced to Pelagian self-effort or Pharisaical focus on
externals and casuistry, forgetting that ‘it is God who works in you, both to will
and to work for his good pleasure’ (Phil. 2.13; cf. Rom 9.16). Sanctification as
ethics is always only the outworking of believers’ union through the Spirit with

74
As recognized in the survey of the following texts (except for those from John’s Gospel) by Davidson,
‘Pondering’, pp. 383–5.
75
For a concise presentations of various possible interpretations of these passages, see H. W. Bateman
IV (ed.), Four Views on the Warning Passages in Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007).
76
E. J. Van Kuiken, ‘Edward Irving on Christ’s Sinful Flesh and Sanctifying Spirit: A Wesleyan
Appraisal’, Wesleyan Theological Journal 49.1 (2014), pp. 175–85.
180 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

the Christ who assumed and healed our fallen nature.77 Nevertheless, scripture
plainly sets forth the expectation that Christian character and conduct
increasingly will approximate Christ’s. This expectation is hamstrung by any
hamartiology which de facto equates life in a fallen world with unmitigated
sinfulness.78 Close attention to the earthly Christ’s sinless character and
conduct amid Fall-affected internal and external conditions can prove
heuristic for Christian living amid the same conditions.79 Proper methodology,
however, is vital: starting with general theories of sin or holiness and imposing
them upon the New Testament data regarding Christ’s life may produce
distortion, an ignoring or misconstruing of the particulars of his unique
identity and mission.80 Something similar may happen with Christians when
the principles of general ethics are applied to them. It bears recalling that early
believers were seen as profoundly immoral – atheists, disloyal citizens, and
haters of humankind – by their pagan neighbours in the Roman Empire when
measured against the prevailing ethics of the day. N. T. Wright articulates well
the distinctiveness of a truly Christ-shaped Christian ethic of sanctification:

Jesus came, in fact, to launch God’s new creation, and with it a new way
of being human, a way which picked up the glimpses of ‘right behavior’
afforded by ancient Judaism and paganism and, transcending both, set
the truest insights of both on quite a new foundation. And, with that, he
launched also a project for rehumanizing human beings, a project in which
they would find their hearts cleansed and softened, find themselves turned
upside down and inside out, and discover a new [moral] language to learn
and every incentive to learn it.81

77
See Noble, Holy Trinity: Holy People, chs 7–8, for a good general account of the implications of
the fallenness debate for Christian sanctification. Cf. D. Sumner, ‘Jesus Christ’s Fallen and Gifted
Nature As The Pattern For Christian Sanctification’ (paper presented at the Edinburgh Dogmatics
Conference, University of Edinburgh, 2011).
78
For a brief history of the development of a hyperactive hamartiology in Western Christianity and
the related misreading of the Apostle Paul’s self-understanding, see K. Stendahl’s classic essay, ‘The
Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’, in his Paul Among Jews and Gentiles
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), pp. 78–96.
79
Thus I find approaches to Christian ethics which affirm the necessity of sinning in cases of conflicts
of moral duties (i.e. ‘tragic morality’) to be problematic on Christological grounds. On this point
I concur with N. L. Geisler, Christian Ethics: Options and Issues (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989),
ch. 6, especially pp. 106–10, although not with his own ethical system. For critiques of both ‘tragic
morality’ and Geisler’s ‘graded absolutism’, see D. C. Jones, Biblical Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1994), pp. 130–6.
80
Davidson, ‘Pondering’, pp. 379–82.
81
N. T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2010), p.
133. Cf. Wright’s entire discussion of Christian sanctification (118–25) and whether and to what
extent Jesus himself may serve as a moral exemplar (125–33).
 The Fleshing Out of the Findings 181

5.4.4 Bibliology
Wright’s reference to ‘a new language’ points towards a final theological locus
to which the fallenness debate may contribute: the doctrine of scripture. As in
the Incarnation, the Word has assumed fallen flesh and rendered it sinlessly
suitable to reveal God’s grace and truth (Jn 1.14); so in the inspiration of
scripture, God has ‘commandeered’ fallen language82 and has renewed,
redeemed, and ‘uprighted’ it so that it bears truthful, gracious witness to the
ways of God and pre-eminently to the incarnate Word. Like its Lord, scripture
too has a chequered genealogy and carries the stigmata of the clash between
God’s holy purpose and humanity’s wickedness. Thus, for instance, majorities
of both the Psalms and the Epistles are ascribed to a pair of sometime
murderers – one from Bethlehem, the other from Tarsus. Yet the salvific
providence of God which peaks in Christ’s dying and rising again judges,
justifies, and sanctifies both the material of scripture and those who produced
it.83 Granted all this, the debate persists as to whether fallibility, error, or their
opposites may be predicated of scripture, as well as the exact meaning of such
labels if they are affirmed or denied.84 To the degree to which this debate is
analogous to the fallenness debate, gains made in the latter may shed light on
the former.

82
I borrow this arresting verb from Sonderegger, Systematic Theology Volume 1, p. 96. She discusses
her doctrine of scripture in §9 of her book.
83
Here lie the seeds of a response to W. H. Katerberg, ‘Redemptive Horizons, Redemptive Violence,
and Hopeful History’, Fides et Historia 36.1 (2004), pp. 1–14. Katerberg urges that scripture
itself both constructs a metanarrative (Creation-Fall-Redemption) and deconstructs it (through
contradictions, ‘texts of terror’, and the like, which he describes on p. 10 as ‘open wounds’
which render scripture ‘full of holes’) and that we should embrace and further this paradox,
simultaneously affirming and denying redemptive metanarrative. Where Katerberg promotes
simultaneity, I would preach sequence: the deconstructive elements in scripture reach their
acme and receive their atonement in the Cross, and the reconstruction of the world issues forth
from an emptied tomb. The ‘open wounds’ of a Saviour ‘full of holes’ paradoxically become the
signs of our redemption by Christ, as do the ‘wounds’ and ‘holes’ in scripture as a whole. Cf.
W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1997), ch. 12.
84
For a sampling of the debate, cf. Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Inspiration and Truth of
Sacred Scripture: The Word That Comes from God and Speaks of God for the Salvation of the World
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014); M. Graves, The Inspiration and Interpretation of Scripture:
What the Early Church Can Teach Us (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014); N. T. Wright, Scripture and
the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today (New York: HarperOne, rev. and expanded edn,
2013); J. Merrick and S. M. Garrett (eds), Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2013); and P. Enns’ tellingly titled Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the
Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2nd edn, 2015).
182 Christ’s Humanity in Current and Ancient Controversy: Fallen or Not?

5.5 A final word

This study has described the fallenness debate and the hidden consensus of
the majority of ancient and modern theologians implicated in it. It has also
prescribed terminological adjustments for the sake of ameliorating the debate
and has surveyed further implications of the position here put forward.
Funding these descriptions, prescriptions, and implications is the conviction
that the truth of God and humanity stands disclosed in Jesus Christ in such
a way that theological language and concepts may be assessed in light of that
disclosure for their fidelity to it.85 The penultimate goal of theological inquiry,
then, is right belief. The final goal, though, is right worship: orthodoxy ends in
doxology. Thus it is fitting to conclude our study of the relationship of the Fall
to Christ’s humanity with lines from two of Charles Wesley’s hymns:86

He deigns in flesh t’appear,

Widest extremes to join;
To bring our vileness near,
And make us all divine:
And we the life of God shall know,
For God is manifest below.

Now display Thy saving power,

Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to Thine.

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,

Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.

85
Cf. A. J. Torrance, ‘Can the Truth Be Learned? Redressing the “Theologistic Fallacy” in Modern
Biblical Scholarship’, in Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s Bible: How the New Testament Shapes
Christian Dogmatics (ed. M. Bockmuehl and A. J. Torrance; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), pp. 143–63.
86
So as not to detract from the intended effect of these lines, I here cite them before quoting them:
stanza 1 is from C. Wesley, ‘Let Earth and Heaven Combine’, and stanzas 2–3 from his ‘Hark! The
Herald Angels Sing’, The Cyber Hymnal #3632 and #2384, respectively, n.p. Cited 22 September 2016.
Online: www.hymnary.org.
 Appendix: Edward Irving’s Patristic Sources

Edward Irving’s article ‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, Morning Watch 1
(March 1829), is the one place in which he compiles quotations from individual
church fathers in support of his fallenness Christology. In this compilation,
two obscurantist practices appear. First, Irving’s citations are imprecise: his
only consistent citation is of the name of a particular author. Occasionally,
he cites the title of the work from which he quotes, but no more, except in
Tertullian’s case. By contrast, his nemesis Marcus Dods’s patristic survey in
The Incarnation of the Eternal Word is much more carefully documented.
Secondly, several of Irving’s quotations are literary montages: he presents them
in paragraph format, but in fact these paragraphs consist of sentences or parts
of sentences pulled from their originally disparate locations and assembled
into artificial unities. When reading such paragraphs, one must bear in mind
that they do not represent seamless progressions of thought on the part of
their authors.
This appendix presents the fruit of efforts at more exact identification
of Irving’s patristic sources, specifically those associated with the fathers
who appear in Chapters 3 and 4 of this study. In some cases, attempts at
identification were unsuccessful, thus leaving room for further research. The
ordering of the material below is as follows: citations and quotations from
Irving’s article are presented in block quote format. My own more exact
citations appear in brackets within the block quotes, inserted at appropriate
‘seams’ in Irving’s quotations. Inasmuch as all of Irving’s quotations presented
here are in Latin, I have supplied English translations in the footnotes
following each quotation.

Tertullian de Carne Christi, p. 555. – ‘Ita utriusque substantiae census

hominem et Deum exhibuit: hinc natum, inde non natum; hinc carneum
inde spiritualem; hinc infirmum, inde praefortem; hinc morientem,
inde viventem. [Carn. Chr. 5] Nihil passus est, qui non vere passus est.
[Carn. Chr. 5 (garbled)] …. Christus salus hominis fuit, causa scilicet ad
184 Appendix: Edward Irving’s Patristic Sources

restituendum quod perierat. Homo perierat, hominem restitui oportuerat.’

p. 559. [Carn. Chr. 14]1
‘Defendimus autem non carnem peccati evacuatam esse in Christo, sed
peccatum carnis: Secundum Apostoli auctoritatem dicentis: Evacuavit
peccatum in carne. Nam et alibi, In similitundinem, inquit, carnis peccati
fuisse Christum: non quod similitudinem carnis acceperit, quasi imaginem
corporis, et non veritatem, sed similitudinem peccatricis carnis vult intelligi.
Quod ipsa non peccatrix caro Christi ejus fuit par, cujus erat peccatum, genere,
non vitio Adae, quando hinc etiam confirmamus eam fuisse carnem in Christo,
cujus natura est in homine peccatrix. Etsi in illa peccatum evacuatum, quod
in Christo sine peccato habeatur, quae in homine sine peccato non habebatur.
Nam neque ad propositum Christi faceret evacuantis peccatum carnis, non
in ea carne evacuare illud, in qua erat natura peccati. Neque ad gloriam: quid
enim magnum, si in carne meliore et alterius, id est, non peccatricis naturae,
naevum peccati redemit? Ergo, inquit, si nostram induit, peccatrix fuit caro
Christi? Noli constringere explicabilem sensum: nostram enim induendo
suam fecit: suam faciens, non peccatricem eam fecit. [Carn. Chr. 16]. … In hac
carne, peccatrici nostrae simili, salutem perfecit. [Marc. 5.14 (paraphrased)?]
Nam et haec erit Dei virtus, in substantia pari perficere salutem. Non enim
magnum, si Spiritus Dei carnem remediaret, sed si caro consimilis peccatrici,
dum caro est, sed non peccati.’ p. 796 [Marc. 5.14]2

1
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, 90. ‘Thus the official record of both substances represents him as
both man and God: on the one hand born, on the other not born: on the one hand fleshly, on the
other spiritual: on the one hand weak, on the other exceeding strong: on the one hand dying, on the
other living’ (Tertullian’s Treatise, p. 19.). ‘He suffered nothing, who did not in reality suffer.’ (Trans.
mine; cf. ‘[N]ihil enim ab eis passus est Christus, si nihil vere est passus.’ – ‘For of them Christ
suffered nothing, if he in reality suffered nothing’ [Tertullian’s Treatise, pp. 16–19]). ‘[That] Christ
[assumed human nature], man’s salvation was the reason, the restitution of that which had perished.
Man had perished: it was man that must be restored’ [Tertullian’s Treatise, p. 49.]).
2
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, pp. 90–1.
Our contention, however, is not that the flesh of sin, but that the sin of the flesh, was brought to
nought in Christ, … according to the apostle’s authority when he says, He brought to nought sin in
the flesh [Rom. 8.3]. For in another place also he says that Christ was in the likeness of the flesh
of sin: not that he took upon him the likeness of flesh, as it were a phantasm of a body and not
its reality: but the apostle will have us understand by ‘the likeness of sinful flesh’ that the flesh
of Christ, itself not sinful, was the like of that to which sin did belong, … with Adam in species
but not in defect. From this text [then] we also prove that in Christ there was that flesh whose
nature is in man sinful, and [yet] that it is by virtue of this that sin has been brought to nought,
[because] in Christ that same flesh exists without sin which in man did not exist without sin.
[For] it would not suit Christ’s purpose, when bringing to nought the sin of the flesh, not to bring
it to nought in that flesh in which was the nature of sin: neither would it be to his glory. For what
would it amount to if it was in a better kind of flesh, of a different (that is, non-sinful) nature,
that he [redeemed] the birthmark of sin? ‘In that case,’ you will reply, ‘if it was our flesh Christ
clothed himself with, Christ’s flesh was sinful.’ Forbear to tie up tight a conception which admits
of unravelling. By clothing himself with our flesh he made it his own, and by making it his own
he made it non-sinful (Tertullian’s Treatise, p. 57).
 Appendix: Edward Irving’s Patristic Sources 185

‘Christus dilexit hominem illum in immundicitiis [sic]. Propter eum

descendit: propter eum praedicavit: propter eum omni se humilitate dejecit
usque ad mortem, et mortem crucis: amavit utique quem magno pretio
redemit. Si Christus creator ejus est, suum merito amavit. Amavit ergo cum
homine etiam nativitatem, etiam carnem ejus. Nihil amari potest sine eo
per quod, est id quod est. Aut aufer nativitatem, et exhibe hominem; adime
carnem, et praesta quem Deus redemit. Si haec sunt homo, quem Deus
redemit, tu haec erubescenda illi facis, quae redemit; et indigna, quae nisi
dilexisset, non redemisset.’ [Carn. Chr. 4]3
‘Cur dubitemus dicere quod Scriptura non dubitat exprimere? Cur
haesitabit fidei veritas, in quo Scripturae nunquam haesitavit auctoritas?’
[Novatian, Trin. 12.1] …. ‘Oportebat Deum carnem fieri ut in semet
ipso concordiam consibularet [sic] terrenorum pariter atque coelestium,
dum utriusque partis in se connectens pignora, et Deum pariter homini,
et hominem Deo copularet.’ [Novatian, Trin. 23.7]4
….

Athanasius contra Arrian [sic]. – Quum Filius verus Deus esset, proprium
corpus cepit, eoque utens ut organo, homo factus est propter nos: ideoque

‘In this flesh, which was like our sinful flesh, he accomplished salvation.’ (ET mine; cf. the following
translation from Evans.) ‘For in this will consist the power of God, in using a similar substance to
accomplish salvation. For it would be no great matter if the Spirit of God were to give healing to
flesh, though it is so when this is done by flesh exactly like sinful flesh, which is flesh, though not
flesh of sin’ (AMOECT 2, p. 599).
3
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, p. 91. (Regarding ‘immundicitiis’, it seems that Irving’s, the editor’s,
or the printer’s eye slipped and added the extra ‘ci’ to ‘immunditiis’ either from ‘peccatrici’ above it
or ‘dejecit’ or ‘crucis’ below it.) ‘Christ … did care for the sort of man … in uncleannessnesses. …
For his sake he came down, for his sake he preached the gospel, for his sake he cast himself down in
all humility even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Evidently he loved him: for he redeemed
him at a great price. If Christ [is] the Creator, with good reason he loved his own …. In any case,
along with man he loved also his nativity, and his flesh besides: nothing can be loved apart from that
by which it is what it is. Else you must remove nativity and show me man, you must take away flesh
and present to me him whom God has redeemed. If these are the constituents of man whom God
has redeemed, who are you to make them a cause of shame to him [, which] he redeemed …, or to
make them beneath his dignity, when he would not have redeemed them unless he had loved them?’
(Tertullian’s Treatise, p. 15.)
4
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, p. 91. ‘Why should we hesitate to say what Scripture does not
hesitate to express? Why will the truth of faith be undecided in that which the authority of Scripture
has never been undecided?’ (J. L. Papandrea, ‘The Rule of Truth: A New Translation of the De
Trinitate of Novatian’, in idem, The Trinitarian Theology of Novatian of Rome: A Study in Third Century
Orthodoxy [n.p.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008], [p. 245]. Cited 18 November 2013. Online: http://
novatianus.info. Regarding ‘consibularet’, the correct word is ‘confibularet’, as attested by Papandrea,
‘Rule of Truth’, [p. 300] n. 482; Novatian, De trinitate 28. Cited 18 November 2013. Online: http://
www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/04z/z_0251-0258__Novatianus__De_ Trinitate__LT. doc.html.
Perhaps the printer mistook the ‘f ’ in the original for the marking known as a ‘long s’.) ‘God had to
be made flesh, so that He might unite in Himself the harmony of earthly things together with the
heavenly, while connecting tokens of both parts in Himself, so that He might join together both God
to humanity and humanity to God’ (Papandrea, ‘Rule of Truth’, [p. 300]; trans. alt.).
186 Appendix: Edward Irving’s Patristic Sources

quae propria sunt carnis, de illo referuntur: erat enim caro ipsius. [C. Ar.
3.31] Necesse est passiones quoque carnis ejus dici cujus est ista caro: [C. Ar.
3.32] et recte passiones Domini appellantur. [C. Ar. 3.32] Quia et illa propria
sunt carnis et caro illa proprium est corpus Dei salvatoris. [C. Ar. 3.34] Verum
corpus ex Maria genitum, idem cum corporibus nostris. Verum corpus ex
Maria secundum Scripturas, genitum est: verum inquam, quia idem est cum
corporibus nostris. [C. Ar. 3.56 or 4.35-36 (summarized)?]5
….

Ambrose. – Pater si possibile est, transfer a me calicem hunc. [Fid. 2.5.41] In

qua forma loquatur adverte. Hominis substantiam gessit, hominis assumpsit
affectum. [Fid. 2.5.42] Non ergo quasi Deus, sed quasi homo loquitur.
[Fid. 2.5.42] Alia voluntas hominis, alia Dei, [Fid. 2.7.52] ut homo suscepit
tristitiam meam, ut homo locutus est. [Fid. 2.7.53] Mihi compatitur, mihi
tristis est, mihi dolet. [Fid. 2.7.53] Sicut mors ejus, mortem abstulit: [Fid.
2.7.55] ita maerorem nostrum, maeror ejus abolet. [Fid. 2.7.55] Turbatur
secundum humanae fragilitatis assumptionem. Et ideo quia suscepit
animam, suscepit et animae passiones. [Fid. 2.7.56] Ut homo turbatur, ut
homo flet, ut homo crucifigitur. [Fid. 2.7.56] Quasi homo dicit quae sunt
humana: quia in mea substantia loquebatur. [Fid. 2.9.77] Propter me Christus
suscepit meas infirmitates. [Fid. 2.11.93] Timuerunt in Deo carnem credere,
et ideo redemptionis gratiam perdiderunt, quia causam salutis abjurant.
[Fid. 3.5.38]6

5
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, p. 91. ‘Together with being the Son of the true God, He took His
own body, and using this as an instrument, He became man for our sakes. And on account of this,
the properties of the flesh are said to be His … for His was the flesh’ (NPNF2 4, p. 410, alt.). ‘Of
necessity … the affections also of the flesh are ascribed to Him, whose the flesh is’ (NPNF2 4, p. 411).
‘And fittingly such affections are ascribed … to the Lord’ (NPNF2 4, p. 411). ‘Since they are proper to
the flesh, and the body itself is proper to the Saviour …’ (NPNF2 4, p. 412; ‘corpus Dei’ seems to be
an insertion from C. Ar. 3.31, in which the phrase ‘the body was God’s’ appears. [NPNF2 4, p. 410]).
‘A true body [was] born of Mary, the same as our bodies. According to the Scriptures, a true body
was born of Mary: true, I say, because it is the same as our bodies’ (ET mine; the phrase, ‘a true body’
appears in C. Ar. 3.42 [NPNF2 4, p. 416], but the rest of the content more closely aligns with C. Ar.
3.56 or 4.35-36).
6
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, 92. ‘ “Father, if it be possible, take away this cup from Me.” …
In what character He speaks. He hath taken upon Him the substance of man, and therewith its
affections. … Not as God, then, but as man, speaketh He.’ (NPNF2 10, p. 464). ‘The will of God is
one, and the human will another’ (NPNF2 10, p. 467; Irving’s order is reversed). ‘As man He bore
my grief, as man He spake …. With me and for me He suffers, for me He is sad, for me He is heavy’
(NPNF2 10, p. 467). ‘ Even as His death made an end of death … so also His sorrow took away our
sorrow’ (NPNF2 10, p. 468). ‘He is amazed by consequence of having taken human infirmity upon
Him. Seeing, then, that He took upon Himself a soul He also took the affections of a soul …. As man,
therefore, He is distressed, as man He weeps, as man He is crucified’ (NPNF2 10, p. 468). ‘As man He
speaks the things of man, because He speaks in my nature’ (NPNF2 10, p. 474). ‘For my sake Christ
bore my infirmities.’ (NPNF2 10, p. 478). ‘[They] feared to believe in [flesh] taken up into God, and
therefore have lost the grace of redemption, because they reject that on which salvation depends’
(NPNF2 10, p. 501).
 Appendix: Edward Irving’s Patristic Sources 187

‘Caro ipsius et anima, ejusdem cujus anima nostra caroque; substaniae est.
[Incarn. 76] Quid est formam servi accipiens? Sine dubio perfectionem
naturae et conditionis humanae.’ [Ep. 23 (46)]7
Ambrose on Heb. ii. 14, says, Quare dixit apprehendit? quia nos quasi
recedentes ab eo, et longe fugientes insecutus apprehendit, et in unam
personam nostrae fragilitatis naturam sibi contemperavit. In eo, id est,
homine quo passus est, potens est vinctos liberare; tentatosque adjuvare ne
vincantur: quia tentationes nostras non solum sicut Deus, sed etiam sicut
homo in seipso per experimentum cognovit. [?]8
….
Augustin. – Deus Verbum, animam et carnem totius hominis suscepit. [Serm.
174.2] Ipsa natura suscipienda erat quae liberanda. [Ver. rel. 1.16.30] Quidam
haeretici perverse mirando laudandoque Chrisi virtutem, naturam humanam
in eo prorsus noluerunt agnoscere, ubi est omnis gratiae commendatio,
qua facit salvos, credentes in se. Inter Deum et homines apparuit Mediator
in unitate personae copulans utranque naturam. [Ep. 137.3.9] Quod ad
hominem creatura est Christus: [?] secundum animam tristis fuit; secundum
carnem passus est mortem. [Serm. 265D.3 (paraphrased)?] Caro in illo
mortua est, non ipse mortuus est. [Coll. Max. 14] –Idem et aeternus in suo,
moriturus in nostro, dum utrumque continet ex seipso, et neutrum perdit ex
altero. [?] In illo divinitas est unigeniti facta particeps mortalitatis nostrae, ut
et nos participes ejus immortalitatis essemus. [Ep. 187.6.20]9

7
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, p. 92. ‘His body and soul are of the same substance as are our
soul and body’ (FC 44, p. 248). ‘What is the meaning of “taking the nature of a slave” [Phil. 2.7]?
Without doubt, it means the perfection of nature and the human condition’ (Letters 1–91 [trans. M.
M. Beyenka; FC 26; repr., Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1967], p. 140; this source
numbers this epistle as 23; the Benedictine numbering followed in PL 16 is 46; see FC 26, p. xv).
8
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, p. 92.
Why did it say ‘he takes hold of ’ [Heb. 2.16]? Because having pursued us as those who had left
him and fled far away, he takes hold of us, and in one person has adjusted our weak nature to
himself. In his case, that is, in the case of this man, the one who has suffered has been able to
free the captives and to help the tempted lest they be conquered, because he has known our
temptations not only as God, but also as a man, by his own experience. (ET mine)
9
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, pp. 92–3. ‘The Word of God … assumed the soul and flesh of
a man’ (WSA III/5, p. 258). ‘The same nature had to be taken on as needed to be set free’ (WSA
I/8, p. 48). ‘Certain heretics, by excessive admiration and praise of [Christ’s] power, refuse to
acknowledge the human nature which is undoubtedly His. Herein is all the worth of grace, by which
He saves those who believe …. He has appeared as Mediator between God and men, in such wise as
to join both natures in the unity of one Person’ (FC 20, pp. 24–5). ‘What belongs to a human creature
to be, Christ is’ (ET mine). ‘In terms of his being soul, he was sorrowful; in terms of his being flesh,
he suffered death’ (ET mine, but following WSA III/7, p. 256). ‘The flesh died in him; he himself did
not die’ (WSA I/18, p. 198). ‘In his own nature, he is eternal; in our nature, he is going to die, while
each of the two natures stays the same on its own, and neither loses anything due to the other’ (ET
mine, taking the first ‘et’ as a typographical error for ‘est’). ‘In Him the divinity of the only-begotten
Son shared in our mortality, that we might be made sharers in His immortality’ (FC 30, p. 237).
188 Appendix: Edward Irving’s Patristic Sources

….

Hilary [of Poitiers]. ‘Ejusdem periculi res est, Christum Jesum vel Spiritum
Deum, vel carnem corporis nostri denegare.’ [Trin. 9.3]10
….

Leo Primus. – ‘Corpus Christi nulla ratione est extra corporis nostri
vertatem.’ [Ep. 139.3]11

It bears noting that Irving’s most carefully documented, most sustained

quotations come from Tertullian. The similarities between the two men
are intriguing: both defend the sameness of Christ’s flesh to ours against
opponents who advocate a ‘better’ flesh for him; both contribute to Trinitarian
theology; both are critics of the churches to which they belong; both become
associated with premillennial and charismatic renewal movements; and both
leave behind a mixed reputation for heresy and schism on the one hand and
zeal and pioneering insight on the other. These similarities, as well as the
question of the full extent of Tertullian’s influence on Irving, cry out for further
investigation.
Additional research also remains to be done into the patristic sources in
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’. First, the sources of the quotations left
unidentified or identified only tentatively above must be located. Secondly, the
quotations given above include only those from church fathers cited by Irving
who are subjects of this study. Irving, however, quotes from other authorities
who are not of interest to this study. The sources of those quotations, too,
require more exact identification.

10
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, 93. ‘It is an equally dangerous matter to deny either that Christ
Jesus is the Spirit of God or that He is the flesh of our body’ (FC 34, p. 276).
11
‘On the Human Nature of Christ’, 93. ‘In no way is [the body of Christ] outside our true bodily
nature’ (NPNF2 12, p. 221).
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 Index

Adam appeal to Irving 22, 73

fallen 16–17, 24, 45, 49–50, 53, 60, 68, appeal to scripture 23
71, 81, 92, 94–7, 104, 107, 109–10, critique of church fathers 22, 158, 162
115–16, 120, 123, 125–6, 136, 141–5, doctrines of election and eternity 29–30
147, 151, 158, 168–9, 176, 182 relationship to Mackintosh 72–3,
historical 24, 45, 71, 81, 168 78–9
unfallen 2, 29, 68–9, 71, 82, 87, 90, relationship to T. F. Torrance 31, 55
94, 96–8, 104–5, 109–11, 123, 131–2, sin’s relation to Christ 24–27, 56
143, 146–7, 154, 164, 168–9 Basil of Caesarea 4, 42, 54
Ambrose of Milan Bibliology. See under scripture, doctrine of
fittingness of the manner of Boehme, Jakob 10–11
salvation 141–2 Bourignon, Antoinette 9, 11 n.33
infirmities of Christ 138–9 Bruce, Alexander Balmain
interpretation of scripture 139–41 Christ’s mortality, temptations, and
relationship to Augustine 138, 141–2 infirmities 68–70
anhypostasia 14, 16–17, 36 church tradition 66–8, 161–2
annihilationism 49 n.237, 82 n.127 critique of Irving 68, 70, 72
Aphthartodocetism 158, 163 Darwinism 71–2
Apollinaris, Apollinarianism interpretation of Pauline sarx 70–71
Christ’s impeccability as implying 82 kenoticism 65–6, 69
opposed by church fathers 42–3, Brunner, Emil 34, 36, 38, 81
49 n.238, 66–8, 74, 86, 109–10, Buddhism 173
113–15, 156
T. F. Torrance accused of 32, 35–6, 40, Calvin, John 37, 86, 164–6, 169
161–2 n.19 Campbell, John McLeod 10, 38–9, 43
Athanasius of Alexandria Cass, Peter 32, 40
appeal to scripture 108, 110–11 Chalcedon 43, 54, 67, 75–6, 83, 112, 123,
debate over pseudonymous 148, 152, 157, 159, 161
writings 108–9 Chiarot, Kevin 32, 36, 40, 170
on Christ’s flesh 105–8, 110–12 concupiscence
relationship to Irenaeus 104–5 Christ’s, negative sense 15–17, 19–20,
Augustine of Hippo 32, 40, 47, 50, 52–6, 61, 68, 76–7, 85,
concupiscence 142–3 89, 109–11, 147, 154, 156, 160–1,
goodness of creation 142 164, 166, 171
original sin 144–5 Christ’s, positive sense 125 n.202, 132
shift on sexuality 143–4 humanity’s, negative sense 17–20,
shift on the work of Christ 145–6 51 n.249, 60, 123, 125, 140–4, 178
sinlessness of Christ 146–8 Mary’s, negative sense 50, 56, 146, 149
Crisp, Oliver 170–1, 173
Baillie, Donald M. 79 n.107, 166 n.34, 167 Cyril of Alexandria
Barth, Karl appeal to scripture 125–6
actualistic ontology 28, 79, 158 Christ’ s ‘fallen body’ 123
 Index 217

connection to other church fathers 122 relational ontology 44–6, 48–9, 56

the Incarnation and deification 123–5 relationship to Weinandy 49–50,
55, 162
deification
Christians’ 83, 113, 117, 122 Habets, Myk 32, 40
Christ’s 6, 106–7, 113–14, 119, Hamartiology. See under sin, doctrine of
121–4, 163–4 Hastings, W. Ross 164–6, 169–71, 173–4
Docetism 75, 83, 86, 100–1, 134–5 Hatzidakis, Emmanuel 5–8
Dods, Marcus (the Elder) Hilary of Poitiers
appeal to church fathers 63–4, 161–2 appeal to scripture 136–8
appeal to scripture 62–3 debated classification 134–5
theological reasoning 60–2 impassibility of Christ 134–7,
possible Aphthartodocetism 157–8, 154–5, 166
162–3, 166 Holy Spirit, the 14–20, 25, 34, 46–9, 61–2,
Dods, Marcus (the Younger) 59 n.2, 72 69, 71–2, 74, 82, 87–9, 93–4, 97, 114,
Dorries, David 4–8 123, 127, 149, 164, 166, 179
Dyothelitism 14, 16–7 Honorius I, Pope 22, 54–5, 158, 160
Hughes, Philip Edgcumbe
Erskine, Thomas 10, 38 appeal to church fathers 83, 161
Eutyches, Eutychianism 14, 152, 157 appeal to scripture 83–4
Eve 94, 96, 120, 131, 176 Christ’s human perfection 82
critique of Barth 80–1
Florovsky, Georges 174
Immaculate Conception. See under Mary
Gnosticism 14, 63, 93, 96–7, 156–7, impassibility
161–2, 168, 173, 177 Christians’ 108
‘Gnostorianism’ 156–7, 162 Christ’s 6, 82–3, 105, 109, 114–15,
Gregory Nazianzen 120, 122, 124, 126, 134–7, 150, 152,
connections to other church 154, 166
fathers 112 Mary’s 175–6
correlation of the Incarnation to impeccability of Christ 6, 25, 34, 48,
deification 113–4 66, 69, 82, 84, 88–9, 139–40, 146.
interpretation of scripture 114–17 See also sinlessness
opposition to Eunomianism and Irenaeus of Lyons
Apollinarianism 113, 115 appeal to scripture 99–102
‘the unassumed is the unhealed’ (Epistle Christ’s flesh as ‘fallen’ 103–4
101) (see under Non assumptus) on creation 93–4
Gregory Nyssen on the Fall 94–5
Christ’s humanity as ‘sinful’ 117–18, on the flesh 96–100, 102–3
121–2 on recapitulation 95–6, 98
imagery for the theology of martyrdom 102
Incarnation 117–19, 121 Irving, Edward
J. H. Srawley’s interpretation 118–19 appeal to church tradition 20, 156–7,
theological anthropology 119–20 162–3, appendix
Gunton, Colin appeal to scripture 19–20
ambiguous terminology 46–7 appeal to theological reasoning 20–21
influence on British theology 43–4 definition of sanctification 18–19
on Irving 44, 46 deviation from ancient-modern
pneumatology 47–9 consensus 165–6
218 Index

distinction between Christ’s person and McCormack, Bruce L. 28 n.107, 29 n.112,

human substance 16, 156–7 169, 172
distinction between Son and McFarland, Ian A. 172
Spirit 14–15 Mani, Manichaeism 14, 60, 63, 70, 109,
distinctions and unity of sin 16–18, 56 142–3, 156–7
heresy charges 13–14, 21 Marcion, Marcionism 109, 130, 132, 134
source of his fallenness view 9–11 Martyrs, martyrdom 102, 108, 136
Mary, Mariology
Jenson, Robert 26, 44 Immaculate Conception 50, 56,
Johnson, Harry 4, 6–9, 173 n.62, 174 165–7, 174–5
Justin Martyr 100–1 impassibility 175–6
relation to Eve 96, 131
Kang, P. S. 32, 40 sinless or sinful 50–1, 64, 114, 118
Kantzer, Kenneth 27 n.106 n.155, 131, 136 n.40, 146 n.92.
Kapic, Kelly 2 See also Immaculate Conception
Katerberg, W. H. 181 n.83 source of Christ’s humanity 76, 85–6,
Kenosis, Kenoticism 14, 47, 60, 62, 65, 89, 107, 114, 131, 146–7, 149, 151,
69, 72–4, 77–8, 82, 113 n.127, 138, 153, 164–5, 168
145, 161 virgin birth, virginal conception 16,
20, 24–5, 33, 36, 49, 61, 68, 71, 88–9,
‘Latin heresy’. See under Torrance, 96, 98, 100, 107, 110–11, 113, 118,
Thomas F. 126, 131, 133, 140, 146, 149, 152,
Law, William 10 154–5, 158, 165, 175
‘law of sin’. See under concupiscence virginity in partu 149 n.114, 175–6
Leo I (the Great), Pope Monophysitism 157–8
Christmas sermons 148–9 Monothelitism 6 n.18, 14, 54, 157
connection to other church mortality, death
fathers 148 Christians’ human nature 97, 108, 133
epistle to Juvenal of Jerusalem 152–3 Christ’s human nature 15, 19, 26,
First Tome 151–3 33–5, 51, 56, 68–9, 83, 103, 108, 111,
Paschal sermons 149–51 114, 120–4, 133– 6, 139–40, 146–7,
Second Tome 153 149–58, 171, 176, 179
fallen humanity 19, 23, 26, 33–5, 68,
Mackintosh, Hugh Ross 94, 104, 107, 111, 114, 120, 123–6,
critique of Irving 34, 73, 75 142–3, 147, 149–51, 153, 155
evaluation of church tradition 74–6, 161 unfallen Adam and Eve 94, 104,
influence on T. F. Torrance 73 107, 143
and Karl Barth 72–3, 78–9
kenoticism 72–4, 77 Nantomah, Jacob 4–8
sinlessness of Christ 74–7 Nestorius, Nestorianism
soteriology of ‘personal Irving, Barth, and Torrance accused
identification’ 74–5, 77–8 of 60, 63, 86 n.152, 156–7, 161–3
Macleod, Donald Nestorius on Christ’s sinlessness 54,
appeal to church fathers 86, 161 125 n.202
appeal to scripture 85–6 opposed by church fathers 122,
creation, not sanctification, of Christ’s 124–5, 152, 156, 162
humanity 85 n.142, 165 Noble, Thomas A. 35 n.155, 168 n.39
critiques of Irving, Barth, and Non assumptus 42, 67, 73–5, 83, 86,
Torrance 84–9, 161–3 112–4, 150, 161
 Index 219

Origen of Alexandria 42, 54, 112 n.120, ‘likeness of sinful flesh’

113, 146 n.93 (Rom. 8.3) 19, 23, 27, 40–1, 51, 63,
Outler, Albert 174 70–1, 74, 86, 100–2, 107, 110, 121,
125, 132–3, 137–40, 146, 150, 173–4
Passions, the 69, 71–2, 90, 94, 114, ‘seed of sin’. See under concupiscence
117, 120, 154, 177–8. See also sin
concupiscence, pathos actual 16–8, 24, 61, 24–25, 37–9, 61,
pathos, pathē 22 n.66, 117, 120–2, 126–7 88, 100, 114–15, 118–21, 133, 140,
Pelagius, Pelagianism 63, 81, 143–4, 179 145–6, 173
pre-existent humanity of Christ 30, 89, constitutional 16–8, 20, 56, 156–7
109, 146 n.93, 168 doctrine of 176–8
original 16–17, 24–5, 51–3, 37–9,
Rankin, Duncan 5–9 56, 61, 63, 68, 71, 75, 81, 89,
91–2, 95, 99–100, 114–15, 118–22,
sanctification. See under sinlessness 125–6, 130–3, 136, 140, 144–6,
Satan, the devil 20–1, 35–6, 47, 50–1, 149–51, 153, 158–9, 164–6, 168,
60–2, 88, 92, 95, 98–101, 103–4, 170–1, 173, 175
109–10, 125–6, 130, 134, 141, 145–6, sinlessness
150–2, 154–5, 179 Adam’s 109
Schleiermacher, Friedrich 75 Christians’ 97, 102, 109, 131,
Scots Confession of Faith 20 178–80
scripture Christ’s 2, 16–19, 22, 25–8, 31, 33–5,
bronze serpent (Num. 21) 52, 101, 37–8, 42–3, 47, 55, 61–3, 67–72,
121, 125, 133–4, 139, 146 74–8, 82–5, 88–90, 102, 109–11,
Christ as ‘a curse’ (Gal. 3.13) 23, 41, 114–5, 117–21, 123–7, 131–3,
100, 106, 114–6, 134, 140–1 137–41, 145–53, 156, 159–62,
Christ as ‘sin’ (2 Cor. 5.21) 19–20, 164, 170, 173–9
23, 27, 41, 51, 83–4, 100, 106, Jeremiah’s and John the Baptist’s 107,
114–6, 121, 125, 137, 140, 147, 173, 111–12
173, 179 Mary’s 46, 50–1, 56, 64, 114,
Christ’s flesh and sinlessness in 118 n.155, 136 n.40, 165, 175
Hebrews 4, 19, 27, 41, 52, 61–2, Pelagian 63, 81, 143–4, 179
66, 69, 71–2, 74, 84–6, 110, 116, Sonderegger, Katherine 166 n.33,
119–21, 151, 176–7, 179 181 n.82
Christ’s flesh and sinlessness in Spanish Adoptionism 68, 74 n.83, 79 n.107
Johannine literature 22–3, 27, 29, Srawley, J. H. 118–21, 163
52, 62, 101, 108, 121, 125, 140–1, Sykes, Stephen W. 163–6
179
Christ’s sin-bearing and sinlessness in 1 Taxonomies 163–6
Peter 19, 84, 86, 99 n.41, 107, 119, Temptation
125, 132 n.14, 140, 173, 179 Adam’s 96, 98, 103–4, 109
cry of dereliction 20, 41, 52, 108–9, Christ’s 15,17, 19–20, 25–6, 35,
115–6, 125–6, 139, 147, 150 39–40, 48, 50–3, 56, 62, 65–71, 74,
doctrine of 181 76, 82, 84–5, 88–9, 96, 98–9, 102–4,
‘form of a slave’ (Phil. 2.7) 23, 51, 110, 113–4, 116, 120–2, 127, 141,
66, 83, 106, 111, 114, 116, 149–50, 145–6, 152, 155, 162, 176–7
152–3 by holy desires 61–2, 69
Gethsemane prayer 20, 39, 62, relation to human nature and
108, 114, 117, 124, 135, 139, 150, 177 sin 70–1, 172–3
220 Index

Terminology interpretations of his fallenness

‘assumed’ 167–8 view 32
‘corruption’ 92 the ‘Latin heresy’ 42–3, 159–60,
‘fallen’ 3 n.3, 47, 55, 75, 87, 126, 162–3
153–6, 167, 170–2 letter to The Monthly Record 37
‘flesh’ 15, 22–4, 33, 47, 50–1, 63, 70–2, relationship to Barth 31–4, 55
74, 85, 96, 105, 110, 123, 173 relationship to Mackintosh 31–4
‘original sin’ 91–2 view and use of Irving 33–4, 37–8, 55
‘restored’ 169–70, 172
‘sinful’ 60, 47, 126, 153–6, 172–3 Ursinus 69
‘sinless’ 3 n.3, 56, 173–4
‘unfallen’ 3 n.3, 168–70 Virgin Birth. See under Mary
‘uprighted’ 169–70, 172, 181
Tertullian of Carthage Weinandy, Thomas
and heresy 129–30 appeal to church tradition 53–5, 160,
the Incarnation 131–4 162–3
interpretation of scripture 132–4 appeal to scripture 51–3
theological anthropology 130–1 non-concupiscent ‘sinful flesh’ 50–1,
theosis. See under deification 56, 165–6
Torrance, James B. 37 n.169 relationship to Irving, Barth, Torrance,
Torrance, Thomas F. and Gunton 49–50, 53, 55
appeal to Eastern fathers 41–2, 162 Wesley, Charles 182
appeal to scripture 40–41 Westminster Confession of Faith 20
Auburn lectures 32–6 World Council of Churches committee
Edinburgh lectures 36–40 meeting 174