CHRIST, TWO NATURES OF

a dogma of Christian belief stating that when the Second Person of the Trinity became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, he then possessed both a divine and a human nature in the unity of a single person. The expression "two natures" indicated that Christ was fully God and fully human. The clarification of Trinitarian doctrine during the first four centuries (one God, three distinct Persons) led to a 5th-century controversy over the divinity and humanity of Christ. At Alexandria the emphasis was on Christ's divinity, whereas Antioch emphasized Christ's reality as human. Nestorius brought the debate to a head by denying that Mary was Theotokos, God-bearer (or, more loosely, the Mother of God). Though the Council of Ephesus (431) condemned the Nestorian view of the semidivinity of the Son, the matter was not finally settled until the Council of Chalcedon (451) formally declared: We all unanimously teach . . . one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in deity and perfect in humanity . . . in two natures, without being mixed, transmuted, divided, or separated. The distinction between the natures is by no means done away with through the union, but rather the identity of each nature is preserved and concurs into one person and being.