Christ's nature?

kalsam

I'm a member of z ethiopian orthodox tewahido church a daughter church of the coptic orthodox church and i belive that christ has one nature united in fact thats wat tewahido means but a russian posed a question saying if christ had one nature uniting both human and devine wouldnt he become something else plz clarify.

mabsoota

it's quite a big topic.
in fact it has been discussed for at least 1500 years and was the focus of some disagreement between the different orthodox churches.
to summarise 1500 years of the discussion of great teachers and martyrs of the faith, (sorry, it seems a bit rude that i even attempt to do this, and obviously i will miss something!) Jesus, the Word, the Son of God, 'became incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin saint mary'. so this shows there was a divine nature and a human nature.
these 2 natures became one, 'without mingling and without alteration'.

this whole concept of 2 united natures can be confusing, so some people in history tended to stress 'see, there is a word there that says united' and others stressed 'see, there are words there that say 2 natures'.

this is a great oversimplification, and i appologise to those whose lives have been spent discussing it, it is even bigger than a PhD topic!

but bascially, in 1990, in geneva, in switzerland, lots of people (bishops, priests and other really clever people) get together and decided that it should not be something that divides the church and that now the 2 groups of orthodox churches should work together, and, in the future, take Holy Communion together.

here are 2 links to the same book, (in case 1 doesn't open) where our patriarch his holiness pope shenouda explains everything:

http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/theology/nature_of_christ.pdf

http://www.bishopantony.org/resources/books/pope-shenouda-books/Natofchr.pdf