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human, without change, without confusion. We recognize the limit of all
theological language and the philosophical terminology of which it makes and
has made use. We are unable to net and con?ne the mystery of God’s utter self-
giving in the incarnation of the divine Word in an ine?able, inexpressible and
mysterious union of divinity and humanity, which we worship and adore.

5. Both families agree in rejecting the teaching which separates or divides the
human nature, both soul and body in Christ, from his divine nature, or reduces
the union of the natures to the level of conjoining and limiting the union to the
union of persons and thereby denying that the person of Jesus Christ is a single
person of God the Word. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for-
ever” (Hebrews 13.8 NRSV). Both sides also agree in rejecting the teaching
which confuses the human nature in Christ with the divine nature so that the
former is absorbed in the latter and thus ceases to exist. Consequently, we re-
ject both the Nestorian and the Eutychian heresies.

6. In the Anglican tradition in the 16th century, the Thirty-nine Articles and
the theologian Richard Hooker witness to the continuing relevance of these
concerns. Article II a?rms ‘that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say,
the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be
divided.’1 In the ?fth book of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, section 5e, Hooker
emphasizes the necessary mystery of the person in Christ. “It is not man’s abil-
ity either to express perfectly or to conceive the manner how (the incarnation)
was brought to pass.” “In Christ the verity of God and the complete substance
of man were with full agreement established throughout the world, until the
time of Nestorius.” The church, Hooker contends, rightly repudiated any divi-
sion in the person of Christ. “Christ is a Person both divine and human, how-
beit not therefore two persons in one, neither both these in one sense, but a
person divine because he is personally the Son of God, human, because he hath
really the nature of the children of men.” (Laws 52.3) “Whereupon it followeth
against Nestorius, that no person was born of the Virgin but the Son of God,
no person but the Son of God baptized, the Son of God condemned, the Son
of God and no other person cruci?ed; which one only point of Christian belief,

1 THE Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and
eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed
Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and
Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very
God, and very Man; who truly su?ered, was cruci?ed, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to
us, and to be a sacri?ce, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.

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