What Is The Metaphysical Spirit?

THE SYMBOL OF CHALCEDON

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also in perfect in manhood

In continuation, then, from the point of our last visit with the fathers on the question of Christ’s personhood and Godhead, whether divided into two entities or natures, we begin with the statement, “We [...] teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood.”  Every Christian should freely give consent to this faithful saying. But I believe it is important to note, as Nate Pickowicz reminds us in his book Christ & Creed, that it is also widely agreed that Cyril of Alexandria, though a brilliant theologian, was known to be very ambitious toward his opponents, seeking not only to destroy their arguments but their reputations. The lust for power, then, had already risen in the history of the churches as Papal authority began to parade itself to hold onto a power beyond what was prescribed (Acts 20:28-30, 32; 1Pet.5:1-4). This is why it is said that a debate “rages” on as to whether or not Nestorius actually believed and taught the existence of two Christs, by which his name became synonymous with the heresy that teaches Christ is divided in his personhood.

Again, most of these arguments are over the use and interpretations of Greek words like ousia (substance) and hypostasis (person). This problem still exists even in our own use of words, by which misunderstandings often arise. For example, the Greek word physin (singular) or physeis (plural) means nature or natures, but when we think of its transliteration “physical,” we assume that it is a material nature that is observable through our own “physical” senses, physical interpreting physical (1Cor.2:13), but man is more than a material nature, he is also spiritual in nature (1Cor.2:14). The spiritual nature is often referred to as the “metaphysical” nature of the body and soul. So this pertains to “the mind” or ‘nous’ of man in its relationship to the physical body (1Cor.2:16). So the mind also has its physical strings into the soul of a man as a metaphysical component of the soul and body, giving the man characteristics of a spirit (1Cor.2:11-15). The mind of a man, however, is influenced by more than its own physical nature but by the nature of all things outside of itself in the reality of the world that the mind is confined in or imprisoned under (Rom.7:24-25; 1Jn.5:19-20). But God, who is Spirit, is not confined to the reality of the metaphysical world (Jn.4:24; Num.23:19; Acts 7:48-50). He is totally other than what we are limited to perceive with our metaphysical mind (Matt.14:26). God sees beyond the limitations of the soul and body (Lk.24:39; Eph.5:30).

Therefore, this question has spiritual and physical dimensions (Jn.20:19-20, 26-29; 21:1, 4, 10, 12-15). When we refer to the human mind (nous), it must be understood in relation to the physical limitations of the ‘psyche’ or soul. But man is more than soul; he is also spirit (pneuma), by which he can influence his physical world (1Cor.15:21-22; James 2:26; Heb.4:12). But again, this “spirit of the mind” has its limitation of influence to the physical nature of the limitations of his physical world (Jn.8:44), whether for evil or for good (Eph.4:23; Phil.1:27; 2Cor.7:1). The substance of God’s Spirit, however, is not limited to the physical limitations of the physical world because He is totally other in the substance of His ‘spiritual’ nature as three souls of one Spirit whereby He is referred to as the Godhead (Rom.1:20; Col.2:9; Zech.11:8; Jer.6:8; 12:7; 32:41; Isa.1:14; 42:1; Lev.26:11, 30). Christ is not “divided” from His spiritual nature when taking on the physical nature of a human body (Heb.10:5; Rom.1:22-25). This is the mystery of the hypostatic union of Christ whereby the soul and spirit of His Godhead are united to the likeness of the weakness of our sinful flesh in bodily form to grow in stature like a true man having never sinned in thought, word, or deed (Rom.8:3-4; Job.15:14; 25:4; Gal.3:10-14; 4:4-5; Lk.2:39-40, 51-52; Matt.3:13-15; Heb.4:15).

Therefore, Christ, without changing Himself, limits Himself to the nature of the flesh in order to become a man (Heb.5:6-11; Lk.22:40-44; Matt.27:46), but He is never divided from the spiritual nature of His Godhead in the dimension of His eternal glory that sees (or senses) all things from beginning to the end (Phil.2:5-11; Jn.1:48-51; 2:23-25; Heb.12:1-2; Lk.17:20-21). What then did He choose to relinquish, for a season, when He became man but the glory of His own honor that He shares with the Father before time began that He may enter the dimension of our physical time as a Son born unto us for “the glory” of a man who would deliver us from the power of sin and death and bestow spiritual honor upon us who believe (Rom.8:3-4; 1Tim.2:5-6; Rom.5:12-21). In this sense only, the glory is temporarily divided rather than the dividing of the person of Jesus (2Cor.3:17-18; Jn.1:14; Rom.6:3-6), for the glory that was and is and forever shall be His is “proven to us” through the glory of His death in the body of the Man and the resurrection of the same Man in the restoration His glory (in honor) before the world was (Jn.17:1-5; 1Cor.15:41-49; Heb.10:11-18). It is in this glory that He becomes “one with Himself” again as of the glory of the only begotten Son of God (Jn.1:1-2, 14; 3:13-18 (NKJV)). So then, it is the glory of the Godhead that He does not share with us, but the glory which He had with the Father before the world was is the glory that He now shares with us in the union and communion of soul and holiness of Spirit (1Cor.6:16-20/emphasis: v.17 (NKJV).

Therefore, having a body prepared for Him does not equal having a soul prepared for Him, for the Godhead of Jesus Christ is an incorruptible soul that demonstrated this fact through the resurrection of His corruptible body (Acts 2:25-28, 30-32; 1Pet.1:22-25), which was prepared for Him like the great fish was prepared for Jonah when he was cast into the depth of the sea (Jon.1:17; Matt.12:40; Heb.10:5). Therefore, His growth from childhood to the death of His “humanity” demonstrates the perfection of His “manhood” under the curse of the law according to the corruption of the body (Rom.7:24-25; 8:8-11, 22-25). But He ascended into glory, transfiguring the body (Jn.20:17; 1Cor.15:45-55). Therefore, we don’t know what that incorruptible body shall be when the redeemed soul is fully clothed with the redemption of the body prepared and made fit for us in His glory held in honor (Rom.9:20-24; Mk.9:2; Col.3:4; Matt.25:31). So then, as the Lord from heaven (1Cor.15:47), Jesus perfected forever the “spiritual” man by creating “one new man” from the two as “a heavenly man” of the new creation (Eph.2:14-18; 4:20-24; Heb.12:8-10, 22-24). This is our glory in the absence of our shame when Christ appears apart from sin (Heb.9:27-28). It is a new body fit for a new economy of life where the currency of the image of our present faith is turned into sight (1Jn.3:2; 2Cor.3:17-18; 5:1-8, 14-17; 1Cor.13:9-13).

Now, this is why we must “teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfectly the same in Godhead and perfectly the same in manhood.” This is the application of confessing Jesus of Nazareth as Lord over all and the exclusive Savior of men (Rom.10:8-13; Phil.2:5-11; 1Tim.4:9-11). But now we return to the Greek word hypostasis to guide our application of this confession further into our reasoning (1Jn.5:20). The word ὑπόστασις literally means “to stand under” at the most basic level. However, it is not a verb but a noun meaning “understanding.” Jesus is the understanding of the personification of the Godhead at every point of “character” that defines God’s holiness (Heb.1:1-4; Col.1:15, 18-20; 2:9). Therefore, (ὑπόστασις) is translated “the express image of His person.” Jesus is the icon (image) of God’s character (Jn.14:6-13; Pr.30:2-5). Person to person as face to face was the Word, in the beginning with God, as a mirror image of spiritual character (χαρακτὴρ) in each personal soul of God’s Spirit (Jn.1:1-2). Yahweh is One God in substantial Being of the spiritual nature but three persons in the soulful parts of the shared character of the unity and union of the spiritual members of the Eternal Being of the Divine nature (Ps.51:6). In the body of the flesh, however, these soulful parts are “represented” by the bowels or kidneys of a man, which work to discern what is good as food for the body and to discard what is not (Matt.15:17; Mk.7:19), and in the same way figuratively represents reason felt in the soul of a man’s spiritual emptiness because of sin and misery lurking in the darkness of those parts (1Jn.1:5-2:1; Matt.5:3).

Diving deeper into this “reasoning” given to us through the “mind” of Christ in this hypostasis of the union of His Godhead to the body of the flesh, believers have been given the same mind of Christ in the union of their soul to the life-giving spirit of Christ. In Philippians 4:7, the peace given to the believer surpasses all “human reasoning,” which in the Greek the word for “mind” (νοῦν, nous) is used. Again, this represents the human faculty of reasoning. But the mind of Christ is “divine” because it surpasses the reasoning of the human mind. Therefore, Christ didn’t give up His divinity to become a man as He demonstrated His divinity perfectly in every stage of development as a man. Also, in 1Jn.5:20, we find that the “understanding” given to believers is a disposition of the divine reasoning in these inward parts on the standard of the Greek word (διάνοιαν/ dianoian), which has its root meaning in the word for mind, νοῦν, nous. Therefore, a reasonable disposition is given to the believer possessed by the Spirit of Christ whereby the enmity of the human reasoning is destroyed by Christ’s death (Rom.8:5-11). True manhood, then, is divine according to the image of the Lord from heaven (Eph.3:14-19/emphasis: v.19). Divine love supersedes human reasoning at every stage of the glory of the only begotten Son of God. The knowledge/gnosis in us under the human weaknesses of our sin and corruptibility must be overcome by this divine love if we will be conformed to the image of the Lord from heaven (Rom.8:28-30). Therefore, the knowledge of God’s wisdom must descend from above and be planted within our inward parts (James 1:16-18; Jn.1:12-13).

Now, as we further apply this, we should consider how God’s name is made incorruptible through the character of Christ’s person as the image of the holy name to redeem the soul of the man appointed to eternal life (Acts 13:48). How can a man represent the goodness of God’s name when a man cannot even keep the reputation of his own name from being defiled (Ecc.7:1; Pr.10:7; 22:1; Mk.7:20-23). This is the image that was lost to Adam, who corrupted the spirit and life of the garden as the image of that economic covenant of God’s name (1Cor.15:21-22, 45; Matt.16:26; Rom.1:25; Lk.9:25; Rom.5:12-14). To preserve God’s name and the quality of the spirit of that life-giving tree called the Tree of Life that kept the garden of God holy, Adam had to be cast out from the presence of God’s holiness to learn the reputation of his own name so that he might call upon God’s name again and be made incorruptible in both soul and spirit (Gen.3:22-24; 4:26; Rom.3:10-20; Acts 17:26-27; Ezk.18:31; 36:26; Mk.1:27). The name and spirit of Adam corrupted the whole world with sin and death (Rom.1:18-25/emphasis: vs.23, 25). So it was the reputation of Adam that Christ took to himself to become a man (Phil.2:7). And this is why it is theologically called “the foolishness of God” (1Cor.1:25). But it is also rightly called the wisdom of God so that we may be made partakers of the divine glory of God’s perfect reputation reserved and preserved incorruptible in glory (Matt.5:48). To the world, the testimony of the gospel is foolishness, but to the adopted children of God, the message of the gospel is both the power and the wisdom of God (1Cor.1:18-31/emphasis: v.24).

Men who work harder at making their own name great will surely count this as foolish (Rom.2:14-15; 1Cor.15:56; Mk.10:18; Jn.17:4-5; Lk.12:10), but there is no man who will ever have a good name in truth who doesn’t first have the name of God written upon his heart (as a law) of the Spirit of life (Num.6:27; Rom.8:2; Jer.31:33; Heb.8:10; 10:16; Rev.3:12). As mentioned previously, Cyril of Alexandria may have made a good name for himself in the spiritual sphere of his own influence through his lust for power by ruining the reputations of others to advance himself (2Cor.10:12-18; Rom.2:14-15, 21-24; 7:23; Jer.17:1), but we know that he could not have begun to do it without the name of God’s only Son in the churches (Jn.14:13-14; 16:23-24). Therefore, in the truth, we can consent with the confession of the holy name that covers our sins and weaknesses (Phil.1:15-18), which are the true reputations of our sinful name (Ps.62:9; Isa.64:6), but it was through Christ taking the form of a slave and making Himself of no reputation to write the law of His own name on our hearts as the glory of heaven’s reputation that has written for us a new name in heaven without one blame of sin (Jn.8:43-46/emphasis: v.46; Rev.2:17; 3:12; 20:15; Eph.1:3-6). Consider that when you meditate on this doctrine because that’s exactly how it is offered to us as “the mind” of Christ (1Cor.2:9-16).

However, when using God’s name to ruin the reputation of others for the exaltation of our own name (Phil.2:3-4; 1Cor.10:23-24), in practice, we deny original sin as the total corruption of our human nature (Tit.1:15-16), blinding ourselves to the glory of Christ’s purpose in coming to His own ruin on our behalf (Gal.3:13-14; Isa.6:5-8; Jn.10:35-36; Ps.22:1; Mk.15:34). Because Jesus is the last Adam, the human soul is totally ruined to have any boast before God as an image of God (1Jn.1:5-2:1), for He has created a divine man from the two (1Cor.15:45-49). The hypostatic union, then, is what releases us from the guilt of our present shame by joining the corruptible soul to the incorruptible spirit of Christ to use faith as the economic key of the Spirit’s liberty (2Cor.3:17-18; Jn.3:8), which is provided to us through Christ’s death and resurrection (Jn.3:3-7; Rom.6:1-7/emphasis: v.6; Eph.2:13-18), to open up the gift of grace that assures us of eternal life both (2Cor.13:4-6), now in the soul by the divine Spirit (1Jn.5:9-13), and eternal life to come in the redemption of the body prepared for glory (Jn.14:1-4; 1Cor.6:18-20; Rom.8:22-23; Mk.12:25). But as partakers of the glory of the divine Spirit, we do not become the glory of Deity (Jude 8-10; 2Pet.2:8-11). This honor belongs to Jesus as the only begotten Son and Lord appointed by the Father to intercede for our fellowship and communion with, not as the Deity of God, but as sons of God’s Deity (Rev.4:2-11; 19:1-10; Rom.8:15; Gal.4:6). But there is a mystery to our fellowship existing as the same nature of God because of the glory of godliness (1Jn.3:1-3; Mk.14:36).

So then, without the hypostatic union, we have no fellowship with God (Jn.15:5), nor can we bear any fruit to God (Jn.15:6-9), for we are like a dead tree in the image of our sin that bears rotten fruit to itself since Christ destroyed both body and soul in Hell as the last Adam (Matt.7:15-20; 10:28; 12:33-37; 15:12-14; Rom.6:21-23; Eph.2:1-3), who represents the whole fallen race when the soul of Adam fell prey to the wicked works of the spirit of the Devil (1Jn.3:8, 10; Jn.8:43-47; Heb.2:14-15; Matt.13:38), for its in His hypostatic union that our souls are grafted back into the Tree of Life as a good tree (Rom.11:16-36; Matt.12:33), through His death and resurrection as the Lord from heaven (Rom.6:1-11; 1Cor.15:45-49), who gives holiness of spirit to our souls that we may truly be conformed to the image of God as a heavenly man putting to death the image of our sin and its fruit of corruption (Eph.4:17-24/emphasis: v.24; Col.3:1-11/emphasis: v.10).

Plutarch, for instance, has a sentence referring to “the mystic symbols of the Dionysiac orgies which we who are participants share with one another.”

There is obviously a certain parallelism here with Christian creeds, and it is not surprising, particularly when we remember the extent to which the Church’s teachers were prepared to exploit the terminology of the mystery cults, that some scholars should have inferred that symbolum was among the words which they appropriated.

It will be recalled that in Ep. 69, 7 he was dealing with the claim of the heretic Novatian to be administering a valid baptism on the plea that “he baptizes with the same symbol as we Catholics, recognizes the same God the Father, the same Christ His Son, the same Holy Spirit, and … does not seem to differ from us in the baptismal interrogation,” and in reply repudiated the suggestion that the schismatics could possibly have “the same law of the symbol and the same interrogation.” Similarly Firmilian, in Ep. 75, 10–11, of the Cyprianic corpus, discussing the baptism practised by a crazed woman, admitted that it lacked “neither the symbol of the Trinity nor the established and churchly interrogation.”

 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, Third Edition. (London; New York: Continuum, 2006), 56–57.