An Apologetical Explanation of

True God and True Man

How is Jesus Christ both fully God and fully man?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made….  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten Son from the Father.  (Jn 1:1-3, 14)

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.  (Phil 2:5-8)

Jesus Christ, the co-eternal Word of God and Only-Begotten Son of God, took on our full humanity in the Incarnation without loss of his divinity.  This is a mystery of the Faith that is foundational to Christian belief.

This belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God is the very foundation of Christianity, and it is a teaching found throughout the New Testament.  In the prologue of his Gospel, St. John emphasized that Christ is the consubstantial Son of the Father.  (Consubstantial comes from a Latin word meaning “of one and the same substance.”)  He did this by describing Christ as the Word (in Greek, Logos) who has existed for all eternity and who is a Person coexistent with God, for he is God himself (cf. Jn 1:1).  (Cf. CCC 251-252)

As the Only-Begotten Son of god, Jesus Christ possesses the divine nature of his Father and is eternal.  As the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he took on, or assumed, the human nature in the Incarnation; this the same human nature, inherited from Adam and Eve, that we all share.  This union of human and divine natures—without mixing the two or confusing either one—in the one Person of Jesus Christ is called the hypostatic union.  Through the power of God the Holy Spirit, God the Son took on a human body and soul in the womb of his Mother.  (Cf. CCC 470-471)

As perfect man and perfect God, Christ has both a human intellect and will and a divine intellect and will.  Yet, his human will and intellect is united to his divine will and intellect such that he is completely obedient to his divine will and there “like us in all things but sin” (Eucharistic Prayer IV).  (Cf. CCC 472-475)

In the early centuries of Christianity, various heresies doubted Christ’s full humanity or full divinity.  Through several Ecumenical Councils the Magisterium refuted these heresies to confirm the understanding of Christ that we continue to possess today.  (Cf. CCC 465-468, 471)

The Catechism addresses this question in paragraph 464.

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