Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed... The voices of our age increasingly mention these names in a string, as if one is the same as the other, as if all are equal. But are they really? Was Jesus just a good man or God Incarnate? Did He intend to start a Church or was one created in spite of His wishes? How can Mary, a mere human, be called "Mother of God"? Why do a billion of this world's inhabitants sincerely believe that what most see as a piece of bread is really their God? Why do those Catholics refuse to take Jesus' body off the cross?
Do these questions sound familiar? If so, then this is the book for you, for your family, for your friends, for your CCD students, or for anyone who needs the truth. Taken from his popular Q&A column, no one compares with James Drummey in terms of giving clear, concise, and easily understandable answers for questions about the Catholic faith.
Chapter 2
Jesus: True God and True Man
Q. How is Jesus true God and true man? Did He shed His divinity when He came to earth?
A. No, He did not shed His divinity when He came to earth. He is true God and true man because there are united in His divine Person, without any confused mixture of both, His divine nature and a human nature. In the words of the Council of Chalcedon, which was held in 451, Jesus is "one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in his humanity, true God and true man, composed of rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father by his divinity, and consubstantial with us by his humanity, 'like us in all things but sin' (Hebrews 4: 15), begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity, and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, born of Mary, the Virgin and Mother of God, as to his humanity."
We call the unity of the two distinct natures of Jesus in the one Person of Christ the hypostatic union, and the fact that the Son of God assumed a human nature and became man in order to bring about our salvation the Incarnation. Jesus is not part God and part man but truly God and truly man.
Q. Has this doctrine of the two natures of Jesus in one Person been disputed in the history of the Church?
A. Many times. Major heresies arose in the early centuries of the Church that denied at least one aspect of this doctrine, and councils were called at places like Nicaea and Ephesus to oppose these heresies For example, there was the heresy of Gnostic Docetism, which denied the humanity of Christ and taught that He only seemed to be a man. There was Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ and regarded Him only as a superior creature and intermediary between God and the world. There was Nestorianism, which denied...
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