SOMETHING CHANGED PT.2

THE SYMBOL OF CHALCEDON

consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us touching his manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin

We continue with this theological question about the body of Christ under the context of the rejection of the presupposition that the body is “good” because Jesus is of the same likeness of the flesh and blood of sinful men while at the same time of the same likeness of God with the Father and the Spirit of God. Now while defining our terms regarding the term likeness (Gen.1:26-7), I intentionally mean the same substance in the essential nature of existence and presence of His Being (Gen.3:24). Therefore, as one person Jesus Christ existed in the flesh as the same substance of sinful men while being without sin in the substantial nature of the soul and spirit of His pre-existing in the form of God with God Almighty as one substantial Being of the Godhead (Phil.2:5-8), for God is one in being but of three persons (James 2:19; 1Cor.8:6; Jn.17:5, 11, 20-23; Mk.12:29; Gal.3:20). Therefore, when we consider the image of Christ’s representation of the eternal nature and Being of God (Col.1:15; 2Cor.3:17-18; 4:3-6; Heb.1:3), we must think about it under the concept of the economic distinction between the law of the Spirit of life and the law of sin and death (Rom.6:23; 8:1-4, 29-30). Jesus of Nazareth intersects both economic spheres through the dual natures of His earthly existence (Gen.3:22). Therefore, He truly lived under the economic bondage of the law of sin and death yet was without sin in the inward parts of the substantial being of His true person and personal union with the Being of God (Jn.1:1-3, 14; Gal.3:13; 4:4-5). He is the eternal Word made flesh, and therefore He is the resurrected Son of God who, as Lord of all, is the Judge of the living and the dead.

In this union, Jesus is made the sympathizer of our human weaknesses and a perfect Mediator between God and man (Heb.4:14-15; Gal.3:20; Rom.8:3-4), for He was made to perfect the priesthood of a new covenant and be the substitutional sacrifice as the only atonement for sinners who come to Him for salvation from the wrath of God (Matt.11:27-30; Jn.3:16-18, 35-36). The two natures are required in Him to be that perfect propitiation of God’s wrath and to be the Creator of the reconciliation of the image effectually lost through the likeness of Adam’s sin (1Jn.1:6-10; Eph.2:11-18; Rom.5:12-14). In Christ, a new offspring is created through the Spirit’s work of regeneration (Jn.3:6-9), creating one new man from the two (1Jn.3:10-15), by which the likeness of heaven’s glory regains representation on earth as it truly and unchangeably is in heaven (Matt.6:10). Therefore, all things are made through the Son (Jn.1:3), whether for Heaven (Rom.9:23-24), according to its own likeness (Col.1:15-18), or for Hell (Rom.9:22; Matt.25:41), according to the absence of the likeness of eternal life (1Jn.5:12), to the glory God the Father (Phil.2:11). It was necessary for God to take on the glory of man in order to destroy the works of the devil and in order to preserve the likeness of the image of God’s glory in the man born of the incorruptible Seed of the spirit of the Word (Heb.2:14-15; Jn.12:50; Gen.3:24; Jn.14:6; 1Pet.1:23). Therefore, by the veil of Christ in human form, we see the mystery of the invisible God in visible form through the earthly life and works of Jesus of Nazareth (Jn.14:7-11). His mission was to secure the promise of eternal life for those appointed to believe through His incorruptible Word as their covering (Jn.3:16; 6:37-40; 13:11; 15:3; Acts.13:48). Therefore, those who do not have the Son do not have life nor will they see life but are treasuring up for themselves the wages of their death in the body of death (Rom.2:5-9; 7:24), which is being prepared for eternal devastation without hope of any relief for the conscious torment in the soul and body of their resurrection (Matt.10:28; Rev.14:9-11; Jn.5:28-29).

The life of the natural man is the blood of the flesh (Gen.2:7; 6:17; 9:4; Lev.17:11, 14), which is not the life of God (1Cor.15:45; Jn.6:63), for that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (Jn.3:6). The blood is corrupted by original sin and fills the body with the wrath of God (Jn.8:44; Ps.51:5-6; Rom.1:18, 29-32), which is the life and wages of sin (Rom.6:5-6, 23). That is the core of a natural man’s soul, but the body of the soul only has an appearance of life in the same way the forbidden fruit had an appearance of goodness, but at its very core, the fruit was rotten and dead. Consider the life of the natural man like that fruit, which when it is ripe, it is the time to eat of its apparent goodness (Gen.3:6). However, when a fruit is ripe, it is the beginning stage of its death (1Cor.15:36-38), having been fully grown (James 1:15). Then it falls from the tree and rots in the ground to sow its seed (Matt.13:27-28, 37-40; Gen.3:15). So it is with the body and soul of the natural man (Rom.6:20-21), once the life of sin is full grown, it is appointed to die once and then the judgment (Heb.9:27-28). But also in this way, sin was in the world at the core of natural man (James 1:14; Gen.3:6), but sin is not imputed where there is no law (Rom.5:13). But there was a law that made the natural man a spiritual man according to the likeness of God’s image in the original man (Gen.1:26-27; 2:16-17; Rom.5:14). Death, then, was the imputation of the violation of that spiritual law (Rom.1:21-25; 2:15; 7:14; 1Cor.15:56). So Adam fell from the representation of the tree of life as a rotten seed through the corruption of the seed of death (Jn.8:44; Gen.3:15), according to the nature of the forbidden fruit of the tree called the knowledge of good and evil (Matt.12:33), for the economy of the tree of life cannot abide in the economy of death (1Jn.3:14-15). Therefore, Hades (Sheol in the Hebrew) was created in the separation of Paradise (Matt.11:23; Lk.16:23; Acts 2:27, 31; Rev.1:18), which is now reserved in Heaven from the prison of Adam’s death (1Pet.3:18-20; Matt.16:18). So then, Paradise is reserved and being prepared in Heaven for those who come out of Adam and into Christ (Jn.14:1-3; Lk.23:43; Rev.2:7), for the world that God made is perfect, and that Paradise was lost to Adam forever by his representation of it (Rev.22:1-5, 14). Therefore, Paradise restored requires a new representative (1Cor.15:45-49), and that representative to enter Death and Hades to save those appointed to believe out of it (Acts 2:27-31; ). Therefore, by the death of Jesus Christ (Rom.8:3-4; 1Cor.15:27), in the nature of the body of his death (Rom.6:3-6), Death and Hades are destroyed in the appointed time (1Cor.15:21-26, 54-55; Rev.20:12-15).

So then, in all things, Jesus was made like us, yet without sin in the inner man (Jn.8:7; Heb.4:15; Acts 10:42; Rom.14:9), for flesh and blood cannot inherit eternal life (1Cor.15:50). Therefore, the body of sin and death (Rom.6:6; 7:24; 8:10; Col.2:11), which is the body that Jesus destroyed through death (Matt.16:17; Jn.6:53; Heb.2:14; 1Cor.15:54-57; Matt.10:28), is not the body that shall be ours in glory (1Jn.3:2), for if Christ has gone to prepare a place for us in the new heavens and new earth (Jn.14:2-3; Rev.21:1-2, 5), the redemption of our body shall be of the material of that new glory to be revealed in the souls that God has redeemed out of the material of our present destruction (Rom.8:18-23; Matt.25:31-46), prepared for the dust and ash that feeds the eternal lake of fire (2Pet.3:7, 10-13; Rev.20:11-15). This body of ours, then, is only good for one thing, which is for our humility before the face of God as the image of our shame to be covered by the power and grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2Cor.3:7-4:6), His only true Son (Jn.3:16-21). Through Jesus Christ, we are reconciled to the holy will of God in Him (2Cor.5:18-21; Rom.12:1-2). Jesus is the icon of our fellowship in the Spirit of the Word (Col.1:13-18). His earthly life is the “symbolum” of our faith (Jude 3; 1Tim.6:20-21). This earthly life required the two natures in the image of one person (1Cor.15:45), the Lord from heaven (1Cor.15:47), who represents the heavenly glory of the Father’s perfection and reconciles the spiritual man born from above to the heavenly race in Christ above (1Cor.15:46-49; Matt.5:48; Jn.3:30-36).

It should never be forgotten that the primary idea which symbolum, in its Latin as well as its Greek form, conveyed was that of a sign, a token, a symbol: it stood for anything by which one was reminded of something else.

The questions and answers were a sign, an expressive and portentous symbol, of the Triune God in Whose name the baptism was being enacted and with Whom the Christian catechumen was being united. That the symbol was a symbol of the Trinity seems to be hinted at by the language of the canon of Arles which has been quoted; and there should be no need to emphasize further the way in which the questions and answers were regularly connected with the Lord’s command to baptize in the threefold Name.

 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, Third Edition. (London; New York: Continuum, 2006), 59-60.