Theologically Speaking

Theologically speaking, most people do not know or care when Jesus became God. This shouldn't be too surprising especially in a culture that by-and-large expects to be spoon-fed their sermons on Sunday morning by stipened clergy. This lackadaisical attitude was not always the case. During the earliest times of the emerging Christian sect of Judaism, and for the following five hundred years, common people, along with their local synagogue and ekklesial leaders threshed out what has been passed down to us.

With each passing century, the common people gave up more and more of their theological pursuits to those who seemed to be more knowledgable or who were better educated. Eventually, it became the philosophers who dictated when Jesus became God.

Submitted as evidence are the definitions below:

Communicatio Idiomatum (Greek, antidosis idiômatôn)

Translated variously as “communion (exchange) of properties,” “communion of idioms,” this technical theological term refers to the incarnate Christ as a “single divine person in two complete natures.” According to the Tome of Leo, whence the Latin phrase is derived, Christ’s person is the Logos, in which the idiomata (“things peculiar to a nature”) of both humanity and divinity are united. For example, when Christ performed miracles, He did so through His divine nature; when He wept in the Garden of Gethsemane and asked His Father to spare Him suffering, it was Christ’s assumed human nature that was operative. Yet in both cases He did not cease to be both fully human and fully divine, for His actions were always those of His person, the Logos, in which the divine and human natures inhere.

Enhupostasia, Enhypostasia

Literally, "being hypostasized," i.e., having substantial existence, this term took on a technical Christological significance in the post-Chalcedonian period (late fifth and sixth centuries), when difficulties arose over the definition of Christ as "two natures (ousiai) in one person (hupostasis)." These difficulties centered around the term ousia (nature or substance) and its philosophical import. Aristotle had taught that every substance (ousia) is composed of both matter and form. In order for matter (hulê) to exist, according to Aristotle, it must be actualized in a form (eidos). Christologically speaking, then, in order for Christ's divine nature to exist, it must be contained in/as a person (hupostasis). The person of Christ, however, is identical with the divine Logos; therefore, it logically follows, the substance or nature of Christ is purely divine. Putting this in Aristotelian terms, Christ's form is the Logos, and His matter is the divine nature - united together a single, divine, person. What place, then, is left (if we follow this reasoning) for the presence of a distinct human nature in the person of Christ? The concept of enhupostasia was developed to answer this question, and to counteract the tendency to downplay the full humanity of Christ. Since Christ, as divine Logos, is identical with the creative power of God, He is not limited to a single nature. In His capacity as Logos, Christ hypostasized both natures, the human and divine, in a single person.

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It should be evident that the above mental wranglings put any historical, Biblically accurate concept of Jesus out of reach to the common man. Only those steeped in the philosophy of Aristotle and neo-Platonism were deemed worthy of knowing the "truth." Thus the early Church Fathers inserted a sort of gnosticism to the fledgling religion. It was also during this time that the wealthy hi-jacked the religion. Only the rich could afford the education required to learn the gnosis. The general populace either accepted the rulings of those Councils that attempted to define who Jesus was, or they were labeled heretics, hunted down and killed. And of course, the "faithful" paid the clergy class for the priviledge!

Perhaps you are reading this information for the first time. If so, please know that the effects of those early philosophers who hijacked the simple truth of Jesus and his original followers continues to this day. Pagan emperors and syncretist bishops (those who mixed pagan philosophy with loosely based Jewish thought) were the ones who gave today's mainstream Christianity its credal statements. Gone is the creed of Jesus, the Shema of Deuteronomy, and the full humanity of the man from Nazareth. In their place we have such non-Biblical terms as the Trinity, Incarnation, hypostatic union, dual nature, and communion of idioms along with the unnatural, unrelatable 100% God 100% Man.