First Council of Nicaea 325AD
Determined that Jesus Christ was God, "consubstantial" with the Father, and rejected the Arian contention that Jesus was a created being and is therefore not God.
First Council of Constantinople 381AD
The Council of Nicaea in 325 had not ended the Arian controversy which it had been called to clarify.
Council of Ephesus 431AD
St. Cyril of Alexandria vs. Nestorius
Nestorius - the term theotokos could not be used to describe Mary, the mother of Christ. divinity could not be born from a human because the divine nature is unoriginate. The man Jesus is divine and the Son of God only by grace and not by nature.
St. Cyril of Alexandria - Christ's divine and human natures being one. “We must follow these words and teachings, keeping in mind what ‘having been made flesh’ means .... We say ... that the Word, by having united to himself hypostatically flesh animated by a rational soul, inexplicably and incomprehensibly became man.” One person of God particularly the Word that is Jesus Christ made flesh.
The Catholic Church condemed Nestorius a heretic.
The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2nd Series, V.14 by Philip Schaff, editor, The Catholic Church condemed Nestorius a heretic. The XII. Anathematisms of St. Cyril Against Estorius, pg. 506,521
Council of Chalcedon 451AD
Arius - Jesus only human, not God.
Eutyches - Jesus was not fully human.
Pope Leo the Great - Christ had two natures.
Flavian of Constantinople and Eusebius of Dorylaeum - the Word had been made flesh and not just assumed flesh from the Virgin and that Christ had two natures.
Chalcedonian Definition - Christ has two natures in one person and hypostasis.
Chalcedon Definition
We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; (ἐν δύο φύσεσιν ἀσυγχύτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀχωρίστως – in duabus naturis inconfuse, immutabiliter, indivise, inseparabiliter) the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person (prosopon) and one Subsistence (hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God (μονογενῆ Θεόν), the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.
Chalcedon’s careful definition is meant to preserve the biblical teaching that (1) the divine nature was united, in the person of the Son, with a human nature (John 1:14; Rom. 8:3; 1 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 2:11-14) and (2) the two natures are united in only one divine Person (Rom. 1:3-4; Gal. 4:4-5; Phil. 2:6-11). As Chalcedon puts it, the characteristics of each nature are preserved—in no way annulled by the union—even as they come together in one person (prospon) and one subsistence (hypostasis).
The Catechism Explained, p.182
"So that," to use the words of St. Anselm, "to redeem man it was necessary that God should become man." As God only He could not suffer; as man only He could not redeem; hence the Godhead assumed a human nature.
HEBREO 9:22
"… kon walay pag-ula sa dugo, walay kapasayloan sa sala."
Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1982, Tan Books pg.54-55
The pastor should explain that these words present for our belief that Jesus Christ, after He was crucified, really died and was buried. It is not without just reason that this is proposed to the faithful as a separate object of belief, since there were some who denied His death upon the cross. The Apostles, therefore, were justly of opinion that to such an error should be opposed the doctrine of faith contained in this Article, the truth of which is placed beyond the possibility of doubt by the united testimony of all the Evangelists, who record that Jesus yielded up the ghost. (Matt. 27:50; Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46; John 19:30).
Moreover as Christ was true and perfect man, He of course was capable of dying. Now man dies when the soul is separated from the body. When, therefore, we say that Jesus died, we mean that His soul was dis-united from His body. We do not admit, however, that the Divinity was separated from His body. On the contrary, we firmly believe and profess that when His soul was dissociated from His body, His Divinity continued always united both to His body in the sepulchre and to His soul in limbo. It became the Son of God to die, that, through death, he might destroy him who had the empire of death that is the devil, and might deliver them, who through the fear of death were all their life-time subject to servitude. (Heb. 2:10, 14, 15).
The Catechism of the Council of Trent , Art. IV, #8, par 2
It is however, our belief that the body of Christ alone was interred. The above words propose, as the principal object of our belief, that God was buried; as according to the rule of the Catholic faith we also say with the strictest truth that God died, and that God was born of a virgin. For the Divinity was never separated from His body which was laid in the sepulchre, we truly confess that God was buried.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Art. IV, #9, par 2
“The second thing that regards the several parts of this Article, namely that burial, passion, and also death apply to Jesus Christ not as God but as man: to suffer and die are incidental to human nature only. But they are also attributed to God because they are predicated correctly of that person who is at once true God and true man.”
The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Art. IV, #10
In a word, Jesus Christ, God and man, is the one who is suffering! the Creator suffers for those whom He created! The Lord is suffering for His servants! He is suffering by whom the angels, all human persons, the heavens, and the earthly elements were created: “For from him and through him and to him are all things are” (Rom 11:36).
Christology. A dogmatic trietied on the Incarnation, Rev. Msgr. Joseph Pohle, Ph.d, D.D., p.186
Whatever is predicated of the Divine Person of Christ according to His Divine nature, can and must be predicated of the same Divine Person also in His human nature, and vice versa; but the predicates proper to the Divine nature must not be assigned to the human nature, and vice versa.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #467
The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine person of God’s Son assumed it. Faced with this heresy, the fourth ecumenical council, at Chalcedon in 451, confessed:
(Read the Chalcedon Definition)
Catechism of the Catholic Church #468
After the Council of Chalcedon, some made of Christ's human nature a kind of personal subject. Against them, the fifth ecumenical council at Constantinople in 553 confessed that "there is but one hypostasis [or person], which is our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Trinity." Thus everything in Christ's human nature is to be attributed to his divine person as its proper subject, not only his miracles but also his sufferings and even his death: "He who was crucified in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, is true God, Lord of glory, and one of the Holy Trinity.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church #470
Because "human nature was assumed, not absorbed," in the mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ's human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she had to recall on each occasion that Christ's human nature belongs, as his own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from "one of the Trinity." The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity: The Son of God . . . worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #609
By embracing in his human heart the Father’s love for men, Jesus “loved them to the end”, for “greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”Jn 13:1; 15:13. In suffering and death his humanity became the free and perfect instrument of his divine love which desires the salvation of men. Heb 2:10,17-18; 4:15; 5:7-9. Indeed, out of love for his Father and for men, whom the Father wants to save, Jesus freely accepted his Passion and death: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.”Jn 10:18. Hence the sovereign freedom of God’s Son as he went out to his death. Jn 18:4-6; Mt 26:53.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #612
The cup of the New Covenant, which Jesus anticipated when he offered himself at the Last Supper, is afterwards accepted by him from his Father’s hands in his agony in the garden at Gethsemani, Mt 26:42; Lk 22:20 making himself “obedient unto death”. Jesus prays: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. ..”Phil 2:8; Mt 26:39; cf. Heb 5:7-8. Thus he expresses the horror that death represented for his human nature. Like ours, his human nature is destined for eternal life; but unlike ours, it is perfectly exempt from sin, the cause of death. Rom 5:12; Heb 4:15. Above all, his human nature has been assumed by the divine person of the “Author of life”, the “Living One”.Cf. Acts 3:15; Rev 1:17; Jn 1:4; 5:26. By accepting in his human will that the Father’s will be done, he accepts his death as redemptive, for “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.”1 Pt 224; cf. Mt 26:42.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #626
Since the “Author of life” who was killed is the same “living one who has risen,” the divine person of the Son of God necessarily continued to possess his human soul and body, separated from each other by death.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #627
Christ’s death was a real death in that it put an end to his earthly human existence. But because of the union which the person of the Son retained with his body, his was not a mortal corpse.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #629
To the benefit of every man, Jesus Christ tasted death. It is truly the Son of God made man who died and was buried.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #630
“During Christ’s period in the tomb, his divine person continued to assume both his soul and his body, although they were separated from each other by death. For this reason, the dead Christ’s body “saw no corruption” (Acts 13:37).
