Jesus has a Human Nature Before He has a Human Body

“There is no Logos as such, no Logos in and for himself. An 'in and for himself' which lacks the determination for incarnation is simply a myth.”

“That Mary is Theotokos indeed disrupts the linear time-line or pseudo time-line on which we Westerners automatically – and usually subliminally – locate every event, even the birth of God the Son.”

Following my church’s children’s Christmas pageant one Sunday, I sat at the altar and answered the children’s questions at random. It’s a tradition I like to call “Midrash in the Moment.” Thankfully, no child asked me to explain the word virgin. A little girl, however, did ask me at the end a question whose answer ought to inspire still greater amazement and incredulity than Mary’s pregnancy ex nihilo.

Q: “How old is Jesus?”

A: “Eternal does not even capture the mystery.”

In declaring Mary the Theotokos (the God-bearer), creedal Christianity made a claim about Jesus far more astonishing than the church often appreciates. Mary, the Council of Ephesus decreed in 431, is the mother of the God-who-is-human; Mary is NOT the mother of a man, Jesus of Nazareth, who is united with the Logos, the second person of the Trinity. In whatever sense terms like “was” and “when” can speak intelligibly about the life of God, there never was when the Son was not.

Just so—

Jesus has a human nature before he has a human body.

The incarnation is not the addition of a human Jesus to an eternal Son. A logos which exists apart from the human nature of Mary’s boy is, as even St. Athanasius insists, mythology.