Introducing Christian Doctrine Chapter 25: The Unity of the Person of Christ

theotokos

"God-bearing," used for Mary, Jesus's mother. Nestorius rejected the reference, observing that God cannot have a mother. Mary, therefore, did not bear God; she bore a man who was a vehicle for God.

kenoticism

Based on the Greek word for "to empty" (Phil. 2:6), what Jesus emptied himself of in the incarnation was the form of God, laying aside his distinctly divine attributes (omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.) to take on human qualities instead.

Council of Ephesus

Condemned the heresy of Nestorius in 431.

Council of Chalcedon

Council in 451 that formulated the classic statement of the doctrine of two natures in one person, the standard for all of Christendom.

dynamic incarnation

Holds that the presence of God in the divine-human Jesus was not in the form of a personal union between the Second Person of the Trinity and an individual human being, Jesus of Nazareth. Rather, the incarnation should be thought of as the active presence of the power of God within the person Jesus.

Nestorianism

Implied by statements from the fifth-century patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, a heresy that split the God-man into two distinct persons, one divine and one human.

adoptionism

The idea that Jesus of Nazareth was merely a human during the early years of his life. At some point, however, probably Jesus's baptism (or perhaps his resurrection), God "adopted" him as his Son.

Eutychianism

View of Eutyches, who rejected the idea of two natures of Christ and declared that Jesus after his birth possessed only one nature, that of God made flesh and become human.