In the second part of the series "What you should know of the faith" is shown for the theological background of Christmas. What does it mean that Jesus is God and man?
Son of God became man. What is this possible? How a person can also be God? This question have spent countless hours, above all the Christians of the first five centuries. The key idea was formulated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Jesus unites "two natures" in his person. He has the divine nature and the human one. Both natures are but in Jesus, according to council "without confusion and without separation." For if the two natures in Jesus "mixed" would, would Jesus is a hybrid of God and man - then he could be a man. Instead, the two natures were separate "separated", then there would be two bad choices: Jesus would not God's son (because he was "separated" from the divine nature would be). Or he would not be a man (because it consists only of the divine nature).
How is it possible, however, that Jesus
may consist of two natures, has not replied to the council. The philosophical presuppositions of ancient Greece at that time were not sufficient to clarify this idea. The New Testament on the other hand had an advantage because it took over the presuppositions of Israel: the essential equality with God results from the fact that Jesus has an unbreakable relationship with God. When Jesus says in John's Gospel: "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10, 30), says he "I and the Father are one" is not. The relationship between Jesus and God is unique. Yet both remain differentiated.
It is the Reformation, thanks to them that this biblical sense has been taken up again. For Luther and his successor will be the first man on relations with what he is. Therefore, Jesus can be "true man and true God" because he is the true human relationship with God. The Tubingen theologian Eberhard Jüngel describes it this way: "God is determined to humanity of the man Jesus to be straight with God and this people." Thus, it is unthinkable that God could be different with Jesus. The relationship between Jesus and God makes their essential unity. God is quite different from Jesus. But he can not be without Jesus.
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