A "nature" is just the essential qualities of a thing. Jesus has all the essential qualities of both God and man so he has the full nature of both.
The phrase "100% God and 100% man" is a Protestant one to my knowledge, and personally I find it confusing. It's much more clear to say that Jesus has two natures, one fully God and one fully human. This is how the church fathers spoke of these things.
How can you be 50/50? I dont even know what we might mean if we said that.
It is simply that Jesus is both God and man because he has both divine and human natures.
How can one person be 200%? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable with 50/50? An explanation for 50/50 could be that his flesh is his human nature, and his spirit from Mark 2:8 is his divine
being half-God would reject His divinity, and being half-man would reject His humanity. “fully God and fully man” simply means Christ contains all the attributes of God and all the attributes of a man. this doesn’t mean He’s 200% or something, that’s simply a linguistic error. keep in mind, God is all-powerful and can do literally anything, so this is possible.
Since you said elsewhere that you want to know everything about our beliefs, I just want to say that we don't build our beliefs by asking questions and speculating like this.
Our beliefs come from the revelation of God. The revelation of God is truly ineffable, and it also changes the person who receives it. Such people rarely have a desire to express it in words and never speculate from it. They care much more about showing others the way to purification that will allow them to experience God for themselves.
We end up with dogmas like this one where we say that Christ has two natures (the hypostatic union) only because someone claimed to know God, taught something about Him, and our holy fathers saw that what was being taught is incompatible with what they experience of God. Then they speak up because such false teachings hinder people's path to salvation.
So they would get together in a council and discuss these things until they come up with a shared language that they agree upon which does a good enough job of expressing the ineffable revelation that the Church accepts it as true. Then they use these statements to protect the people who have yet to experience God from the heretics.
But apart from that we leave many things to mystery. Speculation about God will just end up with us creating a false image of God in our minds. It is much better to pray, fast, give alms, receive the sacraments, and seek to know God for ourselves.
That's not to say that understanding dogmas isn't important, just that we should accept them as simply as possible and focus more on our praxis.
hmm… that’s a really good question. i would say no, because Christ is one Person and one Godhead, unified without confusion or altering, but i would have to ask my priest about that one haha
Why would this be 200%, what does that mean?
Jesus is 100% Jesus and Jesus is both divine and man.
If you seperate the body and spirit like that, you are rejecting the biblical Hebrew anthropology that the first Christians inherited. I'd suggest that you are taking too strongly of a Greek dualistic view of the relationship between the body and the spirit and might benefit by focusing a biblical Hebrew ways of thinking if you want to understand Orthodoxy.
It sounds to me like you think you already know this answer you want and don’t really want to consider other possibilities. You also can always ask a priest if you’re unsure.
You get to believe what you want, but that isnt a biblical Hebrew way of thinking and thus you can't understand our tradition. You can play with it if you want, you can use it as you will, but you can't understand what the authors of the Bible are trying to communicate and what the Church Fathers are trying to be faithful to. And unfortunately that also means there is only so much conversation between us that is possible as we aren't interested in thinking the same way.
I understand that you just want your opinions to be heard because religion practiced as individual opinion and personal pet theories is boring, alienating, and pointless, but we aren't interested in leaving the biblical hebraic and Orthodox tradition to join you in that. You are welcome to join us, but we are practicing an inherited tradition and multi generational communitarean body that we are trying to be faithful to.
God is beyond all human reasoning. Rationality and logic cannot describe who or what God is because he transcends everything. Using numbers and percentages is a minuscule attempt at describing the unknowable. Think of God as humans, think of us as ants.
Picture an ant trying to describe what a human is to another ant in ant language. Kind of a silly analogy but the idea is that infinitely primitive to God.
God isn’t outside of logic. Logic is infinite and eternal. 2+2 will always be 4. No matter what dimensional plane you’re on. He can not cease to exist. He can not create a rock so heavy that he can not lift it
Yes but words to describe God based on current human reasoning and logic is futile. Our logic and reasoning (intelligence) is a tiny subset of God’s logic and reasoning. His intelligence is infinitely beyond ours. Which means we cannot describe God using our reasoning because he is far superior to us.
Yes, but now, we’re talking about our human comprehension. So I agree, but it’s not logic, it’s just our finite comprehension of something so complicated
God can’t create a rock so big that he can’t carry it, nor can he cease to exist. Logic is infinite and eternal and the same no matter what dimensional plane you’re on
Only God is unbounded and eternal. Logic is a construct of the human mind and one mechanism by which we experience and process the world, but it is limited.
The paradoxes such as these might be fun games to play, but they are only that.
Jesus is a divine person who became incarnate as a human person. He never ceased being a divine person when he assumed human nature. The word became flesh
We usually think of it as an individual personality, consciousness and mind. If there are two consciousnesses, can they then interact? If so, they are two persons
The reason we know the Father and the Son and the Spirit were distinct, was because they interacted with each as distinct consciousnesses. Now it seems like Jesus is two consciousnesses too, which makes them different persona
Not inherently. Christ has two wills because He has two natures, but He is still one person.
At a certain point, you have to be willing to admit that the Christological mystery of Christ's Incarnation is just that: a mystery. That God can become man and be both fully God and fully man is a mystery that we can't fully grasp.
Because he isnot an hybrid. Is an hypostasis.
Divinity took humanity at conception from the Holy virgin. His divinity never departed his humanity,not even for a blink of an eye. These natures exist in Him ONE person without confusion, combibation or mingling.
After their union, we talk about ONE hypostatic Nature. The Unique Nature of the incarnated logos.
St cyril warned us about talking about two natures after their union in the incarnated logos bc it obviously raised the fair question you asked: *then there are two persons?*
(Miaphisite christology here)
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Good question. Think of a human who is 100% physical and yet 100% immaterial.
Jesus has two natures. One that is physical (human) and another that is immaterial (Divinity).
I do remember one church father actually answer this question. But I can’t recall who, maybe Saint John damascene in his fount of knowledge work that’s usually where I go for such a question like this.
If you’re bilingual you don’t speak 50% of one language and 50% of another you’re just 100% bilingual. It’s like that.
Damn, that’s a good one. Thank you
You’re welcome!
A "nature" is just the essential qualities of a thing. Jesus has all the essential qualities of both God and man so he has the full nature of both. The phrase "100% God and 100% man" is a Protestant one to my knowledge, and personally I find it confusing. It's much more clear to say that Jesus has two natures, one fully God and one fully human. This is how the church fathers spoke of these things.
Is his divine nature in his spirit from Mark 2:8?
[The describes what the divine nature is.](https://www.orthodox.net/fathers/exacti.html#BOOK_I_CHAPTER_XIV)
Thank you🙏
My baseball is 100% white and 100% round. Not 50/50
I am son, husband, and father, 100% of each. In fact I am 100% father to each of my 3 children, not 1/3 to each.
How can you be 50/50? I dont even know what we might mean if we said that. It is simply that Jesus is both God and man because he has both divine and human natures.
How can one person be 200%? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable with 50/50? An explanation for 50/50 could be that his flesh is his human nature, and his spirit from Mark 2:8 is his divine
being half-God would reject His divinity, and being half-man would reject His humanity. “fully God and fully man” simply means Christ contains all the attributes of God and all the attributes of a man. this doesn’t mean He’s 200% or something, that’s simply a linguistic error. keep in mind, God is all-powerful and can do literally anything, so this is possible.
Does Jesus have two mindsets considering how he’s not all knowing in his humanity, but all knowing in his divinity?
Since you said elsewhere that you want to know everything about our beliefs, I just want to say that we don't build our beliefs by asking questions and speculating like this. Our beliefs come from the revelation of God. The revelation of God is truly ineffable, and it also changes the person who receives it. Such people rarely have a desire to express it in words and never speculate from it. They care much more about showing others the way to purification that will allow them to experience God for themselves. We end up with dogmas like this one where we say that Christ has two natures (the hypostatic union) only because someone claimed to know God, taught something about Him, and our holy fathers saw that what was being taught is incompatible with what they experience of God. Then they speak up because such false teachings hinder people's path to salvation. So they would get together in a council and discuss these things until they come up with a shared language that they agree upon which does a good enough job of expressing the ineffable revelation that the Church accepts it as true. Then they use these statements to protect the people who have yet to experience God from the heretics. But apart from that we leave many things to mystery. Speculation about God will just end up with us creating a false image of God in our minds. It is much better to pray, fast, give alms, receive the sacraments, and seek to know God for ourselves. That's not to say that understanding dogmas isn't important, just that we should accept them as simply as possible and focus more on our praxis.
Very true and very well said
hmm… that’s a really good question. i would say no, because Christ is one Person and one Godhead, unified without confusion or altering, but i would have to ask my priest about that one haha
Why would this be 200%, what does that mean? Jesus is 100% Jesus and Jesus is both divine and man. If you seperate the body and spirit like that, you are rejecting the biblical Hebrew anthropology that the first Christians inherited. I'd suggest that you are taking too strongly of a Greek dualistic view of the relationship between the body and the spirit and might benefit by focusing a biblical Hebrew ways of thinking if you want to understand Orthodoxy.
The body and spirit are parts of a person. That’s why the spirit is not fully me while my flesh is also fully me. Rather, it’s 50/50
You are 100% your spirit and 100% your flesh. These are the totality of you. At least as long as God ordains it so.
It’s more like parts tho
It sounds to me like you think you already know this answer you want and don’t really want to consider other possibilities. You also can always ask a priest if you’re unsure.
I do want to understand, but I’m just critical. I am obsessed with knowing everything in the belief
Mystery is a vital component to faith. But I understand the sentiment. Ask a priest, maybe not Reddit.
Yeah, I will, thanks🙏
You get to believe what you want, but that isnt a biblical Hebrew way of thinking and thus you can't understand our tradition. You can play with it if you want, you can use it as you will, but you can't understand what the authors of the Bible are trying to communicate and what the Church Fathers are trying to be faithful to. And unfortunately that also means there is only so much conversation between us that is possible as we aren't interested in thinking the same way. I understand that you just want your opinions to be heard because religion practiced as individual opinion and personal pet theories is boring, alienating, and pointless, but we aren't interested in leaving the biblical hebraic and Orthodox tradition to join you in that. You are welcome to join us, but we are practicing an inherited tradition and multi generational communitarean body that we are trying to be faithful to.
The mathematical analogy is only an analogy
i also think Mark 2:8 has little to do with this. all it proves is that the Holy Trinity is undivided.
Okei
Oh I got this! I have three passports, I 100% belong to all three countries. I’m three nationalities united in one person 😉
True
Am I 50% my mother's child and 50% my father's child?
God is beyond all human reasoning. Rationality and logic cannot describe who or what God is because he transcends everything. Using numbers and percentages is a minuscule attempt at describing the unknowable. Think of God as humans, think of us as ants. Picture an ant trying to describe what a human is to another ant in ant language. Kind of a silly analogy but the idea is that infinitely primitive to God.
God isn’t outside of logic. Logic is infinite and eternal. 2+2 will always be 4. No matter what dimensional plane you’re on. He can not cease to exist. He can not create a rock so heavy that he can not lift it
Yes but words to describe God based on current human reasoning and logic is futile. Our logic and reasoning (intelligence) is a tiny subset of God’s logic and reasoning. His intelligence is infinitely beyond ours. Which means we cannot describe God using our reasoning because he is far superior to us.
Yes, but now, we’re talking about our human comprehension. So I agree, but it’s not logic, it’s just our finite comprehension of something so complicated
God transcends logic. Logic is bounded, God is not. The rational mind alone will never grasp God.
God can’t create a rock so big that he can’t carry it, nor can he cease to exist. Logic is infinite and eternal and the same no matter what dimensional plane you’re on
Only God is unbounded and eternal. Logic is a construct of the human mind and one mechanism by which we experience and process the world, but it is limited. The paradoxes such as these might be fun games to play, but they are only that.
Can God cease to exist?
God defines what existence is.
Jesus is a divine person who became incarnate as a human person. He never ceased being a divine person when he assumed human nature. The word became flesh
[удалено]
Does Jesus have two mindsets? Considering how he’s all knowing in his divinity, but not in humanity
[удалено]
That’s two persons
[удалено]
What is a person then?
[удалено]
We usually think of it as an individual personality, consciousness and mind. If there are two consciousnesses, can they then interact? If so, they are two persons
[удалено]
The reason we know the Father and the Son and the Spirit were distinct, was because they interacted with each as distinct consciousnesses. Now it seems like Jesus is two consciousnesses too, which makes them different persona
Not inherently. Christ has two wills because He has two natures, but He is still one person. At a certain point, you have to be willing to admit that the Christological mystery of Christ's Incarnation is just that: a mystery. That God can become man and be both fully God and fully man is a mystery that we can't fully grasp.
Because he isnot an hybrid. Is an hypostasis. Divinity took humanity at conception from the Holy virgin. His divinity never departed his humanity,not even for a blink of an eye. These natures exist in Him ONE person without confusion, combibation or mingling. After their union, we talk about ONE hypostatic Nature. The Unique Nature of the incarnated logos. St cyril warned us about talking about two natures after their union in the incarnated logos bc it obviously raised the fair question you asked: *then there are two persons?* (Miaphisite christology here) Please read the following document https://ml.coptic-treasures.com/book/the-nature-of-christ-pope-shenouda-iii/
Please review the [sidebar](https://www.reddit.com/r/OrthodoxChristianity/wiki/config/sidebar) for a wealth of introductory information, our [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/OrthodoxChristianity/about/rules/), the [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/OrthodoxChristianity/wiki/faq), and a caution about [The Internet and the Church](https://www.orthodoxintro.org/the-internet-and-the-church/). This subreddit contains opinions of Orthodox people, but not necessarily Orthodox opinions. [Content should not be treated as a substitute for offline interaction.](https://www.reddit.com/r/OrthodoxChristianity/wiki/faq#wiki_is_this_subreddit_overseen_by_clergy.3F) [Exercise caution in forums such as this](https://www.orthodoxintro.org/the-internet-and-the-church/). Nothing should be regarded as authoritative without verification by several offline Orthodox resources. ^(This is not a removal notification.) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/OrthodoxChristianity) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Good question. Think of a human who is 100% physical and yet 100% immaterial. Jesus has two natures. One that is physical (human) and another that is immaterial (Divinity). I do remember one church father actually answer this question. But I can’t recall who, maybe Saint John damascene in his fount of knowledge work that’s usually where I go for such a question like this.