On Christ's human nature
Question: Did Christ in the incarnation take into union a fallen human nature? Irving, Barth, and Torrance affirm; I deny (with help from others).
Misquoting a patristic
One of the critiques about the claim—that Christ took into union a fallen human nature—is a misapplication of Gregory of Nazianzus’s statement that “whatever is not assumed cannot be healed.” He was addressing this to Apollinaris in defense of Christ’s human mind and not whether his flesh was fallen. Therefore it would be inaccurate to use this statement to support the claim that Christ needed to assume all that we are including fallen human nature in order to accomplish redemption and healing for us.
Necessary property of human nature
For Christ to be truly human, Irving et al argued, he needed to assume a fallen human nature for they concluded that true humanity entails our present fallen condition. However, it must be conceded that Adam before the Fall was a true man and all Christians in glory will retain their true human nature even when all sin is vanquished. Fallenness, therefore, is not a necessary property to be genuinely human.
What’s the difference anyways?
The differentiation made between nature and person as well as fallenness and sinlessness tended towards unnecessary and even arbitrary distinctions. For instance, Irving nuanced that the human nature itself apart from Christ is attributed with sinful properties but not the person of Christ. On this account Irving is implicated with making harsh divisions between the nature and person of Christ. This is inconsistent for the nature is inextricably linked to the person that whatever constitutes the nature is inevitably predicated to the person. Thus, speaking of Christ, Letham rightly remarked that “any attribution of fallenness to that nature is a statement about Christ” (Systematic Theology, 531).
Another example is Barth’s distinction between sinlessness and fallenness in that fallenness does not necessarily entail sinfulness. For Barth, sinlessness pertains to Christ’s activity whether his obedience by omitting sin, willingness to bear human limitations, or admission to be in the state of fallen man. By defining sin or lack of sin in this manner, then the proponents of this view can maintain that Christ assumed a fallen human nature, yet without sin. However, this is a truncated view of fallenness for it eviscerates the pervasive and corrupting effects of sin. Donald Macleod pointed out the impossibility of distinguishing between “fallen” and “sinful” for the former category includes the latter and vice versa (Person of Christ, 228). Even if, as Oliver Crisp suggested, that the proponents of the fallenness view modified original sin by excluding guilt and retaining some degree of corruption, Christ’s human nature would still be considered sinful and abhorred by God (Divinity and Humanity, 106, 108, 112). The claim that Christ took a fallen human nature collapses when it is admitted that original sin includes both corruption and guilt, and that fallenness entails sinfulness.
Merely a charade or true and genuine
The belief that the temptations of Christ are merely a charade had he not assumed a fallen human nature is misguided. Though the intention behind this argument is commendable, it actually weakens his ability to come to our aid. By presuming that Christ must have a fallen human nature to defend the genuineness of his temptations so that he could sympathize with us in our own temptations, minimizes the scope and magnitude of his sufferings.
First, it must be stated that the temptations of Christ were not from within, but without. Yet by no means were his temptations any less real. On the contrary since Christ faced every trial and testing head on throughout his life, he bore the intense weight of the hostile opposition and suffered unimaginable anguish. The fact that Christ did not succumb easily to the lures of Satan, but resisted all his deceptive guiles, Jesus indeed felt and suffered the “full force of temptation’s ferocity” (Person of Christ, 227-8). A person gains more confidence and comfort to persevere because Christ the pioneer (Heb 2:10; 12:2) did in fact lived through immense and intense sufferings and temptations beyond what fallen human beings can know.
Apex of redemption
Another concerning implication is shifting the weight from the cross to the incarnation. In a sense it becomes “salvation by incarnation.” Because Irving contended to move away from a market-based paradigm of soteriology, Paget rightly remarked that salvation becomes centered “in Christ’s overcoming of human nature…than an atonement on the cross” (“Christology,” 242). Though the incarnation is integral to the entire redemptive work of Christ, the cross—which is the culmination of his obedience—is diminished in the background.
From Torrance’s perspective incarnation and atonement are so inextricably linked and interwoven that distinctions seem to be blurred. According to Torrance, Christ needed to participate in our fallen and depraved condition to bring us out, as it were, from our debased and futile state. The strength of this argument, however, rests upon their insistence that Christ assumed a fallen human nature (“The Relationship," 1-2). If this requirement must be upheld, then Christ would be regarded to be in Adam for he assumed our fallen human nature that we inherited from Adam (Systematic Theology, 531-2.) If this is admitted, then Christ would need atonement for himself and we still would remain in our sins.
Conclusion
The claim that in the incarnation Christ took into union a fallen human nature can be seen as a commendable proposition. The proponents aimed to prove the authenticity of Christ’s humanity, while maintaining his integrity as God the Son by qualifying he was without sin. The Son entered into our cursed world, into our fallen state to condemn sin in the flesh. But as argued above, the humanity of Christ does not need to be fallen in order to be real: Fallenness is not an essential property of the human nature. In addition, Christ faced real, external temptations, even if the outcome was determined. He felt the full brunt of the testing, and yet not one time did he surrender to a single temptation.
Sinners need not a savior who is identified with their fallen state—for what can a sick person do for another invalid. Rather morally condemned human beings need the God the Son incarnate, the holy and perfect one, who perfectly obeyed the Father through suffering on behalf of transgressors to secure their redemption. A sinless, unblemished and spotless Lamb is the sacrifice a sinner needs to fully pay the debt he owes God and to satisfy the just wrath of God.
References
Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. I/2. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956.
Crisp, Oliver D. Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Gunton, Colin E. The Actuality of Atonement. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988.
Irving, Edward. The Collected Writings of Edward Irving. Edited by Gavin Carlyle. 5 vols. London: Alexander Strahan Publisher, 1866. https://archive.org/details/collectedwriting05irvi/page/n5/mode/2up?q=%22sinfulness+of+sin%22.
Kapic, Kelly M. “The Son's Assumption of a Human Nature: A Call for Clarity.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 3 (2001): 154-66
Letham, Robert. Systematic Theology. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2019.
Macleod, Donald. The Person of Christ. Contours of Christian Theology. Edited by Gerald Bray. Illinois: InterVarsity, 1998.
Paget, Michael. “Christology and Original Sin: Charles Hodge and Edward Irving Compared.” Churchman 121 (2007): 229–48.
Pratz, Gunther. “The Relationship between Incarnation and Atonement in the Theology of Thomas F. Torrance.” Journal for Christian Theological Research 3 (1998): 1–6.
Sumner, Darren O. “Fallenness and anhypostasis: a way forward in the debate over Christ’s humanity.” Scottish Journal of Theology 67 (2014): 195–212.
Torrance, Thomas F. Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ. Edited by Robert T. Walker. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008.