Did Jesus Assume a Fallen Human Nature?

Over at TGC the question has been asked: Did Jesus Assume a Fallen Human Nature? Luke Stamps, Credo blogger and Assistant Professor at California Baptist University (OPS), has answered. Here is just a portion of his response (you can read the whole thing here):

So what should we make of this FHN position? There is much to commend here, at least in terms of the position’s motivation. Certainly all orthodox Christians want to maintain the real and meaningful incarnation of the Son of God. He was indeed “made like his brothers in every respect.” He assumed a concrete human nature—body and soul—so that we might have a genuine “concern” with him, to echo Barth. Likewise, we also want to affirm that the divine Son assumed all that it means to be human so that he might heal and redeem all of our nature—body and soul. Gregory’s maxim holds true: if Christ only assumed, say, a human body, then our fallen human souls would be left to perish.

Nevertheless, there are several significant problems with the FHN view.

First, it tends to neglect the fact that fallenness is not intrinsic to humanity. Fallenness is a not a “part” of humanity that must be healed. It is a condition of moral corruption and a propensity toward sin. All that is required for the Son’s genuine incarnation and his representative work on our behalf is the assumption of a full human nature (body and soul), not a fallen human nature. Adam was fully human prior to his fall into sin. And Christ is fully human even though he does not possess the corruption of other human beings.

Second, the FHN view assumes that one can be in a state of fallenness and not be sinful. But this assumption is far from self-evident. Indeed, the mainstream Reformed understanding of original sin argues precisely the opposite: to possess a fallen nature is to be guilty before God. Indeed, humanity’s guilt in Adam is logically prior to the corruption they inherit from him. In other words, no one possesses a fallen human nature who is not also guilty before God. Even if we could conceive of a scenario in which someone could be fallen but not guilty, it is difficult to see how even this state of fallenness is not morally repugnant to God. Presumably “fallenness” in this context means possessing a propensity toward sin, even if no actual sin is committed. But how could a human being in this state not be condemnable in the eyes of a holy God? (For more along these lines, see Oliver Crisp’s excellent essay on this topic in Divinity and Humanity, chapter 4.)

Third, the FHN would seem to pose serious challenges to the historic understanding of the person of Christ. According to the “Definition” issued at the Council of Chalcedon, there are two distinct but inseparable natures (divine and human) hypostatically (that is, personally) united in the one person of the Son. But how could the infallible Son of God be joined to a morally fallen human nature? Would this not call into question the divine Son’s impeccability, that is, his inability to commit sin? Or would one need to posit two persons in Christ, and hence the heresy of Nestorianism, in order to preserve both the impeccability of the Son and the fallenness of Jesus Christ? These Christological conundrums can be avoided if we also avoid the FHN view (again, see Crisp’s essay for more reflections in this vein).

Finally, the FHN view seems to ignore the fact that we can affirm what might be called the fallen experience of Jesus without positing a fallen nature in him. To put it another way, Christ experienced the effects of the Fall even though his nature was not complicit in it. We are not to imagine that Christ blissfully waltzed through life untrammeled by the suffering, sorrows, and pains of fallen human experience. The Gospels present Jesus as one who was hungry, tired, thirsty, grief-stricken, and even morally tempted and vulnerable to conflicting desires (besides his wilderness temptations, we might also think of his struggle in Gethsemane).

But none of this requires his assumption of a fallen nature. No, Christ is in possession of an unfallen human nature, but during his state of humiliation he lived and moved and had his being in a fallen world. So even the incarnate God was not immune from the horrors of fallen existence. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). Furthermore, in his atoning death, the Son of God was legally reckoned “to be sin”—even though he himself was sinless—and thus died as our substitute and representative. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). So in the end, none of the Savior’s glorious work is surrendered by rejecting the FHN view.

Read the entire response here.