Scripture and God in Christianity

majesty, should be defiled by associating with human nature, and his sublime powers no less debased
by their contact with what is abject. We are not at a loss to find fitting answer even to this
objection. Do you ask the reason why God was born among men? If you exclude from life the
benefits which come from God, you will have no way of recognizing the divine.... Our nature
was sick and needed a doctor. Man had fallen and needed someone to raise him up. He who had
lost life needed someone to restore it.... Were these trifling and unworthy reasons to impel God to
come down and visit human nature, seeing humanity was in such a pitiful and wretched
state.?" 651 Therefore the Logos mingled with manhood in Christ to raise it to his own exalted
status and to transform it into pure and divine nature. Grillmeier observes that Gregory's "famous
simile of the absorption of the flesh in the Godhead `like a drop of vinegar in the sea' is extremely
bold theological language." 652 How it happened is a mystery incomprehensible to human
reason. F. Young observes that "For all the detail of his trinitarian discussions, Gregory stands ultimately
before a mystery, and this is where his dogmatic theology and his so-called mysticism
coalesce." 653
Though the Cappadocian's Trinitarian formula of the divinity being of one essence, one nature in
three forms, persons ( personae), three independent realities, is called "the scientific" formula, 654
it did not provide any intelligible solution to the problem it was formulated to solve, i.e. the historical
Jesus and his relationship with God. The words used to distinguish the persons in the eternal
trinity are, as observes Tillich, "empty." "And what do such words mean? They are words
without content, because there is no perception of any kind which can confirm their meaning. To
anticipate a bit, Augustine said these differences are not expressed because something is said by
them, but in order not to remain silent. This means that if the motives for the doctrine of the trinity
are forgotten, the formulae become empty." 655 It may not lead to Docetism, Sabelllianism, or
Modalism of Athanasius, but it could lead to tritheism, which, in the case of the historical Christ,
would also be a naive anthropomorphism.
By now it becomes clear that the above discussed orthodox Fathers insisted upon the true, perfect,
full divinity and Godhead of Jesus Christ. They aspired to maintain two mutually contradictory
principles i.e., the transcendence and ineffability of God in the figure of God the Father, and
full incarnation of God in the human figure of Christ. All the given explanations, whether as
modes, or persons, or any other interpretation certainly lead to corporealism and anthropomorphism.
It is impossible to maintain the full incarnation of God in a human being who lived a true,
historical and full human life and aspire to avoid or deny charges of corporealism and anthropomorphism.
That becomes even more evident when we turn to the discussions about the will and
nature of the person of Jesus Christ which were at the center of later controversies.
The Person of Jesus Christ:
It has always been Christians' desire for redemption that had ultimately led them to proclaim the
deity of Jesus Christ. From earlier Fathers to the Council of Constantinople there had been a
common thread weaving them together, a common concern that was to safeguard the proper deity
of Christ alongwith the transcendence of God. There always remained the question of Christ's
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