For Christians of Jewish origin, Jesus is the Savior of the whole world from sin. St. Clement of Alexandria presents our Lord as “Jesus, who heals both our body and soul.”395 He is the skillful divine Physician who alone can save us from the consequences of sin.
Some may ask: was it necessary for the Word of God Himself to become incarnate in order to redeem us and heal our human nature?
By disobedience, man chose death (see Gen. 2:17) instead of life. God taught Adam the ritual of animal sacrifice as a sign of the need to shed blood for his salvation (Heb. 10:2). That was a symbol of the unique sacrifice of our Lord Jesus.
It was necessary for our salvation that the Word of God Himself should be incarnate and die for us, not only because He alone is able to fulfill divine justice; but also because being
391 St. Epiphanius of Salamis, Ancoratus 7.1, 7.8 (FOTC 128:69, 71).
392 St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Holy Spirit: Against the Followers of Macedonius 10 (NPNF II/5:319).
393 Origen, De Principiis (On First Principles) 2.4.4 (ANF 4:277–278) and Homilies on Numbers , trans., Thomas P. Scheck, (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2009) Homily 16.3: p. 92.
394 Origen of Alexandria: Exegetical Works on Ezekiel. the Fourteen Homilies and the Greek Fragments of the Homilies, Commentaries and Scholia. Text and Translation , trans., Mischa Hooker, ed., Roger Pearse, (Ipswich: Chieftan Publishing, 2014) Homily 6.6: p. 195.
395 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 3:12 (ANF 2:295).
the Creator, He can renew our human nature. He is the almighty God who gives us victory over death and evil spirits; and He is the Heavenly One who can raise us up to His heavens to inherit eternal glory as children of God (Rom. 8:15, 21; 9:4) and become the likeness of God.
Christ is Lord. His nature or essence is one and the same nature or essence as the Father.396 The Son is eternal; His birth from the Father is without beginning. St. Clement of Alexandria says, “The Father is not without a Son, but He is co-existent with Him; He is the Father of the Son.”397 The Son is one in essence with the Father for He is in the Father and the Father is in Him.398
Regarding the nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, the Alexandrian tradition insisted on affirming the oneness of the Lord, confirming the true unity between divinity and humanity without separation or fusion.399
The divine Teacher, in His unbounded love for the believer, participates in his life and cares for even the least of his concerns. St. Clement of Alexandria says, “For, just as the sun not only illumines heaven and the whole world, shining over land and sea, but also through windows and small chinks sends his beams into the innermost recesses of houses, so the Word diffused everywhere casts His eye-glance on the minutest circumstances of the actions of life.”400
The scholar Origen says that the Son is begotten of the Father, not by a process of division, but in the same way that the will is born of intellect. He says, “the only-begotten Son of God is His wisdom hypostatically existing … who that is capable of entertaining reverential thoughts or feelings regarding God, can suppose or believe that God the Father ever existed, even for a moment of time, without having generated this Wisdom? … therefore we must believe that Wisdom was generated before any beginning that can be either comprehended or expressed … we understand [Wisdom] to be the Word of God, because of her disclosing to all other beings, i.e., to universal creation, the nature of the mysteries and secrets which are contained within the divine wisdom; and on this account she is called the Word, because she is, as it were, the interpreter of the secrets of the mind … But it is monstrous and unlawful to compare God the Father, in the generation of His only-begotten Son, and in the substance of the same, to any man or other living thing engaged in such an act; for we must of necessity hold that there is something exceptional and worthy of God which does not admit of any comparison at all, not merely in things, but which cannot even be conceived by thought or discovered by perception, so that a human mind should be able
396 See Richardson, Alan, Creeds in the Making: A short introduction to the history of Christian doctrine , (London: SCM, 1979): pp. 54–55.
397 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 4.162.5; 5.1.3; 7.5.5 (ANF 2).
398 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 1.24.3; 1.53.1; 1.62.4; 1.71.3; 3.101.1 (ANF 2).
399 See Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty, The Terms Physis and Hypostasis in the Early Church , ed., Maryrose Halim, (1986).
400 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 7.3 (ANF 2:528).
to apprehend how the unbegotten God is made the Father of the only-begotten Son. Because His generation is as eternal and everlasting as the brilliancy which is produced from the sun. For it is not by receiving the breath of life that He is made a Son, by any outward act, but by His own nature … And we must be careful not to fall into the absurdities of those who picture to themselves certain emanations, so as to divide the divine nature into parts, and who divide God the Father … Rather, therefore, as an act of the will proceeds from the understanding, and neither cuts off any part nor is separated or divided from it, so after some such fashion is the Father to be supposed as having begotten the Son.”401
The Fathers cited
- St. Clement of Alexandria