The phenomena of human life are mixed between good and evil, and the goodness of God in the mind of man clashes with the reality of pain in his life. The issue of pain and evil puts the goodness of God under question! Or puts His omnipotence and goodness in contradiction! These questions have always tormented human thought. Throughout history, many solutions have appeared to explain the issue of the existence of evil and the goodness of God at the same time, that is, to explain the presence and absence of goodness at the same time.

Gods and humans are characters from two different, if not opposite, worlds. God is uncreated and humans are created beings. God is immutable and unchanging, while man is subject to changes, diseases, and weaknesses until his final manifestation—death!

Can God unite with man? And what would happen if he were to unite with him? These are two questions that have tormented human thought in general, but especially some Christians in their attempt to follow the person of Jesus Christ. It was not easy to explain how “the Word became flesh.” The second person of the Holy Trinity takes flesh from the Virgin! The incarnation is an event based on a concept that is strange or unknown to human logic, so the logic of many stumbles upon it.

The incarnation of God means that the Creator takes on the state of the creature. (1)And that the example is conceived in the image of the one who is likened to it. People knew in the Bible that man was created “in the image and likeness of God,” but the incarnation reverses events, so that God is conceived in the image of man and takes on his skin. Thus, he who is outside the bonds of time and space becomes subject to them, but he also breaks their chains. The incarnation is the greatest “wonder” in the life of humanity and the history of the entire world. If it is natural, for example, for the flame of fire to be directed upward, it is neither natural nor logical for the flame to be directed downward. This is the wonder that God condescends to take the form of a servant, but also without diminishing it. This contradiction is the wonder in itself, for to those who ignore it it is illogical, and to those who accept it it is the power and wisdom of God. How can God condescend without losing His transcendence?

It was not easy for human reason to accept the meeting and union of the divine with the human! That is why the Church was tormented for four centuries by two currents of thought. The first current tends to consider that God was “incarnated” only in appearance – taking the form of a human being. While the second current believes that the incarnation of the Word Jesus means that God endowed the human Jesus with special gifts or was later deified. The two completely opposite currents start from the same false principle, namely that it is impossible for the divine to unite with the human.

The first heresy was Nestorianism, which believed that Jesus was a “perfect human being” by nature, but saw in him special or unique divine gifts. This view of “Jesus” is found in all religions that honor and revere him as a prophet, more than one prophet, or the greatest of all prophets.

The second trend is represented by the “Monophysite” heresy (the people of one nature), which considers that Jesus is “perfect God” but that he “appeared” in the flesh only as an illusion!

In both trends, Christianity remains - unfortunately - merely an advanced religious and moral system or moral improvement, while man remains subject to death and corruption. It is widely believed that the death and resurrection of Jesus generates in us a “moral resurrection”! Christianity is unlikely to be like that.

The union of God with man, a hypostatic union and not a moral or superficial union, is the essence of Christianity, without which it becomes empty. Therefore, for Saint Polycarp, whoever does not believe in the incarnation of Jesus the Word is not a Christian. This faith is the foundation of our Christianity. Yes, there is a paradox, especially in ancient religious and philosophical human thought, a paradox between what is spiritual and what is material, between what is divine and human, between what is eternal and what is worldly, between what is noble and what is sinful. And this paradox was abolished by the incarnation of the Word, the person of Jesus.

The heretical Jesus was either a perfect man or an abstract image of an incorporeal God. Jesus came to prove that God loved the universe and man so much that he united himself with his flesh. He is the mystery hidden from all eternity, and he is the blessed purpose for which God created the world according to Maximus the Confessor. (2).

Christianity is not, then, a religious system that connects man to God through commandments and duties, thus changing his moral life. Christ is the beginning of a “new creation,” the beginning of creation united with God, the beginning that will be realized in every human being. The long struggle of the Church and the blood of the martyrs and saints were not merely the price of defending “concepts” – dogmas. Christians did not want religious philosophies and human ideas to cancel the secret of the divine plan, which is the renewal of man in his skin as well. This body of ours will wear incorruption and become carried by God. The Christmas hymns and the Ascension Feast hymns emphasize this truth, the truth of the divine incarnation in the birth and the truth of the glory of the human body in the ascension! So, in truth, our body is planted in corruption in order to rise in incorruption. If God the Word had not actually become incarnate and if Jesus was not perfect God and perfect man, then nothing would have been saved in us, even if we changed all religious systems and laws.

Jesus, the perfect God and the perfect man, “reformed” the truth of creation. If the truth for created beings is their joining death as the end of their existence, and resurrection is strange and illogical because the body is a creation that leads to corruption and death. Then the incarnation of God means exactly that life is what has become a truth for this body and that death has become strange and intrusive to the life of man, that is, the life of his body and his skin! “Jesus,” the God and the man, gave matter and skin their dignity and meaning for their existence, and gave creation its beauty. Creation is not an entity that the divine will plays with or from which human needs are derived. The universe is not for the satisfaction of divine desires or human desires! Creation holds a much greater dignity in the eyes of divine love. God created it and created man to immerse it in His glory! If Jesus is only a perfect God or only a perfect man, then all of the above is futile! Glory remains for God and disgrace for man. God remains a harsh judge and an unjust creator, while man is merely an oppressed slave and a suffering worshipper.

So how can two different natures (divine and human in Jesus) unite? At first glance, it may seem scientifically and philosophically that this is not possible without changing one or both of them! But Christianity is the religion of freedom. It knew God as free and man as such. It is the religion of “personalism.” Yes, two different natures can unite when their “way” of existence is similar. Man is in the image and likeness of God, meaning that his way of life is similar to God’s way of life, which is the way of freedom and love. A person can take on the nature of another person, if the latter lives like him, without changing.

Christianity, the religion of freedom, believes that the “person,” the free being who determines and decides the type and nature of his relationships, is the master of “nature,” which offers him only its characteristics. When we say that God is free, this means that he is not captive to his nature, nor even to our nature when he takes it. This is the true and eternal life that Jesus came to bring into our lives and lead us to.

Adam failed to live this life, and led himself into slavery to need or desire, and thus lost true life: “When you eat of this fruit, you will die immediately.” He followed the “way” of death! Which is to satisfy pleasure and not to preserve the relationship (human personality) with God. Adam failed to resemble God, and accordingly God resembled him, and the second person, “the Word, became flesh.” Thus God uses the potential of man as a person living in freedom and love in order to bear his form (be incarnated) and realize the union of God with man. The man-God was a call to Adam, but when he failed to realize it, the God-Man came. This is why Nicholas Cabasilas repeats the words of Maximus the Confessor, that man was created for Christ Jesus to come. (3).

Yes, Jesus carried our body completely, which became ours after the fall and sin, with all its properties. But this does not impose sin on Him, because sin is not of the nature of the body but of weakness of will. Sin is not of “nature” but of “person”. Because sin is a disorder of relationships and not a disorder of the body! Therefore, Jesus carries our body and is like us in everything except sin. If sin were of the nature of the body, then when Jesus saves His body He would have saved all people, and this is not our faith. The incarnation of Jesus opens up for everyone to achieve the freedom with which He liberated our nature in His body, but He does not grant it freely and immediately. When God carried a body, He presented the first “person” in whom our nature was healed and liberated from the bonds of sin and the world of corruption.

The existence of man as a “person” allows God as a person to unite with him. The existence of God as a person also allows Him to freely condescend and raise our humanity to Himself without bringing shame upon His transcendence. The existence of God as a person allowed Him not to submit to His nature but to use its properties when He willed. Thus in the person of Jesus, the perfect God and perfect man, we find the full properties of the divine and human natures. But God concealed some of the divine properties behind the weakness of human nature. Nevertheless, these concealed properties appeared several times, as in the Transfiguration. Jesus, the God and the Man, although He bore our human nature, He bore its properties without submitting to it. That is why we see Him when He wills as a God walking on water, or when the Jews wanted to stone Him and the hour of His glorification had not yet arrived, we see Him disappear from them.

“He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” (4) That is, He concealed some of His divine attributes (His glory) in the lowliness of our human nature, so that He might become visible to us and live among us and teach us. Just as He is able to conceal Himself (empty Himself) and is not compelled to reveal His glory, He is also free from the attributes of our human nature and has revealed His glory many times. He bears the glory of His divine nature and the weakness of our human nature and is free to accept or conceal any attribute of either. He is the One who freely determines the use of the attributes of each of the divine and human natures, without one canceling out the other. There are two natures subject to one Person.

But when we speak of a nature and deprive it of its properties, we speak of a dead or non-existent nature, and when we speak of a person in the abstract without a nature, we speak of a person who has no powers and therefore does not have any relationship, i.e. we are speaking of an inanimate substance and not of a free living being. Therefore, the two natures of Christ cannot both lose their properties. Therefore, Jesus bore the full divine nature and the full human nature, i.e. “the properties of each of the two natures remained intact.” (5).

Here the proponents of the one will and the proponents of the principle of one power erred, who accepted the existence of two natures of Christ and the incarnation of the Word, but in order to acquit Him of sin they removed from Him the source of the sinful will, that is, the human will. They considered that Christ took the human nature without its will, or in the second case with the proponents of one power, without the human powers and properties. But then we speak of two natures with one work and powers and one property, then we speak in reality of one nature, either it is a composite and the result of the two natures, or one nature canceled the other and “swallowed it up”. Jesus cried out to the Father, “Take this cup away from me”, and here His fearful human will appeared before suffering and death, but He immediately continued, “Nevertheless, not my (human) will, but Yours (our divine will) be done”. Therefore, we need here to re-clarify that the properties of each nature, including its will and powers, are not obligatory on the free person. A person freely uses “whatever he wants” of the properties of nature or natures in him.

The divine decision of Jesus was not natural, that is, compulsory from His nature. It was not a natural superiority of one nature over another. Rather, the decision was a free choice. Paul the Apostle describes in the Epistle to the Hebrews Jesus’ struggle to place His human will in obedience to the divine will: “With loud crying and tears, he made supplications and petitions to Him who was able to save Him from death. And He was heard because of His godliness, though He was a Son, and learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” (6)Jesus obeyed even death on the cross, that is, he subjected his human will to the divine will of the Father (his divine will shared with the Father). If the human will in Jesus was not subject to the divine will, this means that it was not healed by Jesus.

Jesus bore the human will as our will, but he subjected it to his divine will (united it with it) and healed it. The existence of two wills in Jesus does not mean the existence of two decisions. A person can have multiple wills, but he takes one decision and one position. Jesus’ permanent decision was a decision to unite the human will with the divine, and this decision was the fruit of his freedom and not the result of the divine will swallowing humanity. Therefore, the existence of two natures in Jesus does not mean the existence of two persons, and the existence of two wills does not mean the existence of two persons. Personality is the way of being, not its structure.

We speak of the mystery of the incarnation as the incarnation of the Word of God, not as the deification of the man Jesus. That is, the Word of God, who existed before the incarnation, wished at a moment in time to take on our human nature with its characteristics and weaknesses. God the Word did not enter into the man Jesus, but rather the Word added God to its divine, natural, human nature in the incarnation to heal it. Jesus is the Word of God who became flesh, “and in him was the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” (7).

That is why Gregory of Nyssa cries out, “What is not taken is not healed.” (8)That is, Jesus healed the entire human nature because he took it with all its properties. And these properties are not sin, because sin is the result of a wrong decision and is not in nature. Jesus Christ is a perfect God and a perfect man, with two natures and two wills, in whom the properties of each of the two natures were completely preserved.

[Footnote related to the title] Some of the ideas contained in the article “The Wonder” mentioned earlier are repeated at the beginning in the text of this book, due to the necessity of the integration of the subject here, which was published as an independent article.

(1) Gregory of Nyssa, “To Similikion,” [Jaeger III, I, 68].

(2) “To Thalassius,” [PG 90, 621].

(3) “Life in Christ,” 6, 58. Panayioti Christou, “Philokalia,” 22, 574 (in Greek).

(4) FL 2, 7 and 3, 21.

(5) Doctrinal, Vespers of the Third Tone.

(6) Hebrews 5:7-9.

(7) Cole 2, 9.

(8) “Message 101″, [PG 37, 181].