The Doctrine of Christology

For the Fathers it was their views on salvation that provided the grounds for their claim that Christ was both divine and human. Thus the divinity of Christ follows from the claim that only God can save: ‘The underlying conviction of the genuinely religious man about salvation is that its source can only be God himself. This fundamental axiom was a basic criterion of orthodox thought in all the great fourth-and fifth-century controversies.’ ¹ This axiom was entailed by their views on salvation. Thus according to the recapitulation theory only a truly divine saviour could save: ‘Only one who was divine in his own right could impart to man a share in his own divine nature, make them “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).’ ² Similarly the ransom theory entailed that Christ should be fully divine. If he were merely human he could not have been victorious over the devil. The devil is able to hold a mere human in captivity but he cannot prevail over one who is divine. This also applied to all sacrificial views on atonement (including the later theory of penal substitution). Only a divine sacrifice could provide adequate satisfaction to the infinite honour and justice of God. From this it is clear why the Fathers could appeal to their views on salvation to reject all attempts to deny or to limit the divinity of Christ. This provided Athanasius with a knock-down argument against the view of Arius that Christ is a created being: created beings cannot be saved by one who is himself merely a created being.