An Orthodox Physician Contemplates the Fear of Death and
Dying During the Public Health Measures for Covid-19
My parents, ages 89 and 90, stood together on the front porch like perplexed children, their quiet bewilderment in sharp contrast to my vociferous, animated rebukes for doing their own grocery shopping during a pandemic, rather than relying on me. As we stood there two meters apart, my mother, whose cognitive decline had become a little worse of late, surprised me with a teaching moment.
“But, what’s the difference if I die now or later?” she innocently asked.
I looked at her in astonishment. My medical training had taught me to provide patient centered care, and I, in turn, taught this to my medical learners. My 30 plus years of experience with the elderly repeatedly confirmed that in their twilight years, they value and choose quality of life over a longer life—hands down. If they have to jump through inconvenient, uncomfortable or time-consuming hoops to extend their time here on earth, they would much rather experience no hoops at all followed by a speedy death. Under no circumstances are they willing to stop living to the fullest, even if it means dying sooner. Ironically, this is exactly what the public health measures have been asking us all to do, especially the elderly.
Only if I can convince my elderly patients that the intervention would improve their quality of life and not necessarily just prolong it, only then are they on board. This should not be surprising to a physician who is familiar with palliative care, for these same principles also apply there. At the end of life, almost all patients prefer a more comfortable and earlier demise to a difficult and drawn-out dying process, just to stay alive a little longer. Their loving families also want the same and there are very few exceptions.
Therefore, it should have come as no surprise to me that my mother (and father) were no different. They knew they were very blessed to still be living independently in their early nineties, in their bungalow of 52 years, and they greatly valued keeping it that way for as long as possible. Giving up independent grocery shopping meant giving up freedom. To them, a pandemic was no worse (in fact, it was much better) than WWII fighter planes dropping bombs in the city where they both grew up. Life still went on, and so did living.
“But,” I continued, “what if you get very sick and end up in the hospital? We will not be able to visit you. You will be all alone, and if you died, you would die alone.”
“Everyone dies alone,” my mother chuckled, as though it were common knowledge. “No one shares their death with anyone else.”
Deep down, I also knew this to be true. Sharing death is not like sharing a sandwich that you can just cut in half. When I reflect on mass murders, mass executions, mass deaths in wars or accidents, isn’t everyone’s dying experience their own? When the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, everyone who died, did so at virtually the same instant, but they all died individually, on their own, alone, even if they were in a crowd. Isn’t it for that reason that we have the expression, being alone in a crowd?
When I was learning to swim in my middle age, my daughter helped me overcome my fear of jumping into the deep end of the pool by doing it with me. We held hands and jumped. We shared the jump. One could say the experience was the same. It may have looked the same but it was not. I was frightened and she was not. It was my first time, but not hers. After the jump, our hands separated in the water so that we could both resurface. We came back up individually, having experienced the same physics and the same water at the same place and time, but with entirely different expectations, different emotions, different reactions and different thoughts. We did the same thing together, but we did not have the same experience.
Every death is different as well, both for the departing and those left behind, and some are harder than others.
In my experience, the dying often report visions of their parents or other loved ones who have died before them, looking happy or radiant. Sometimes the visions are heavenly and sometimes demonic. Relatives often tell me their dying loved one stares into the distance, seemingly oblivious to what may be happening around them. Secular medicine calls these experiences hallucinations. I believe they are a foretaste of the final destination of the soul. It is the demonic visions that I find troubling, and the dying process tends to be harder when this is the case. If the family is religious, I recommend a visit from a spiritual care provider. If they are Orthodox, I encourage Holy Confession and Communion with a priest. I do this regardless, but especially when there are unpleasant experiences during the dying process.
I have also witnessed other types of difficult or uneasy deaths—people “hanging on to their last breath” as it were—until their loved ones could finally reassure them with words like, “it’s OK, we will be fine, you can go now,” and immediately, they go. Were they hanging on because they feared their death would cause their loved ones too much pain? I believe so because as soon as the loved ones speak those reassuring words, the death is almost instantaneous.
This was not the case, however, with one Orthodox gentleman whose wife and family had already spoken those reassuring words. He was palliatively hospitalized, at the end of his life, and although all his medical test results indicated he should have died already, his soul struggled to depart for days. When I suggested Holy Communion, I discovered that the dying man had not confessed or communed in decades because of his transplant. His anti-rejection drugs chronically compromised his immune system, and he was afraid of catching an infection from the Communion Spoon. His wife had grown accustomed to this and found herself so caught up in her husband’s medical struggles, that she did not even think about calling a priest. As soon as he received Holy Communion, he relaxed and breathed his last. His soul could not depart without it. I was not there to witness it, but his grateful wife could not stop talking about it. For me this is just one more example of the great love and mercy of our Saviour, who does everything He can without interfering with our freedom, gifting us with every possible opportunity, even in our last moments, to bring us Home to Him.
It is debatable whether or not the dying individual who is unresponsive is aware of the presence of others or can hear or understand what is being said. In the movies, we usually see death as a result of war, a crime, or an accident, and the dying person on the screen, who was full of life and vigor moments before, is still able to communicate until their last breath. In reality, however, most people die of a disease or illness. In these instances, death is either very sudden, as in a cardiac arrest, and the dying individual has next to no opportunity for any form of expression; or death is prolonged, as in a death due to cancer. In the latter instance, the one dying is still unable to respond towards the very end, in effect, creating a type of “aloneness,” even if they are surrounded by others.
Even in this state of unresponsive “aloneness,” some people still seem to prefer dying alone. Countless times, I have provided grief counseling to those who lost a family member because, despite their best efforts, they were not at the bedside at the precise time of death. People feel so guilty over that bathroom break, that drink of water, that snack, that phone call or that nap they decided to take, only to return moments later, having just missed the death of their loved one. Despite the countless hours of exhausting vigilance, “I was not there,” they mourn.
This has occurred so often in my palliative care experience, that when death is near, I now counsel family members to expect their loved one to die when they are not around. For some reason, the dying often seem to prefer it that way, perhaps to avoid experiencing any drama during their departure or perhaps to make it easier on their loved ones. I have often heard the older generation commenting on how important it is to not make a fuss at the bedside of the dying because this makes it difficult for the soul to depart peacefully. “It’s not good for the soul,” they would say, “to wail beside the dying person.”
This day and age, there is a great deal of wailing over Covid deaths, much more so than any other cause of death. Despite all the collateral damage, Covid has taken center stage. Deaths due to increased suicide, deaths due to increased drug overdoses, and deaths due to all other diseases, whose treatments have been cancelled or postponed to prevent the spread of Covid, are no less tragic, but are not talked about nearly as much as Covid deaths. It is extremely difficult to find reliable data on the number of deaths due to Covid versus the number of excess non-Covid deaths during this pandemic. If the excess non-Covid deaths exceed the deaths due to Covid, then clearly, we, as a society, have done something very wrong, because in the big picture, we have not prevented any deaths; we just replaced some deaths with others, and possibly even increased the total death toll by over-focusing on Covid, keeping in mind that death (mortality) is not the only type of collateral damage. We also need to consider excess non-Covid morbidity (illness) such as the increase in eating disorders and other mental health problems, delayed treatment of illness in general, increased addictions, domestic violence, crime, poverty, and so on. Any excess in mortality (death) or morbidity (illness) societies may have experienced while frantically trying to contain Covid, would be the result of generalized panic, which is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “a sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behaviour.”
I saw this type of panic face to face during a heart-to-heart with my mother-in-law, another nearly nonagenarian, but one who is widowed and lives alone. The panic, however, was not hers. In 2020, my husband and I often tried to convince her to break her isolation by visiting us, but she refused, even at Christmas. Unlike my parents who rejected the Covid restrictions in favour of living, my mother-in-law embraced them to prevent her death. This was not for her own sake, but for the sake of her daughter, who had already lost one parent, and who had expressed great fear over her mother possibly dying, and especially dying alone. Groceries were delivered to her door, conversations were held with masks two meters apart over the threshold, and she never left her apartment for months on end, not even to attend Church, her favourite activity. Needless to say, there was no human physical contact.
My mother-in-law complied to diminish someone else’s fear. She believed the measures were exaggerated but did not want to upset her children, who she imagined would experience her death in a more agonizing way if she died alone and away from them. The thought of this made her cry. So, she put on a brave face and pretended her prolonged isolation wasn’t that bad. She made a tremendous sacrifice, but her already fragile health deteriorated, edging her closer to that which none of us wanted. She lost appetite and strength while her increasing depression morphed into chronic pain. Despite her daughter’s best intentions, a strict imposition of the public “health” measures augmented her mother’s suffering and frailty, ironically edging them both closer towards that which they each feared the most—a lonely mother dying alone.
This is a classic example of the living worrying about the dying and vice versa. Each tries to protect the other from experiencing pain, but when communication breaks down because of fear, more pain results, often followed by guilt. This important point is also part of palliative care counseling, and I am thankful that my sister-in-law realized this and softened her approach.
During the first wave of Covid, my youngest child, in her early twenties, developed a fear of being sick and therefore alone, because of the tragedy that befell our nursing homes. This brought to mind those times my children would get sick when they were young. As all sick children do, mine clung to me like glue, freely sharing whatever oozed from their eyes, mouths, or noses. The universal mom, myself included, embraces her sick child, stroking, hugging, and kissing the ooze, fully aware that in a few days, when her child would be back to normal and jumping on the furniture, she would be nursing the flu in bed. This is the naturally human, maternal response.
“My darling,” I said to my daughter, without even thinking, “if you ended up in ICU with Covid, I would put on my lab coat and my badge and walk right in there and climb into the bed with you. They would not be able to get rid of me because of my exposure to you, and we would quarantine together in ICU.” I had no idea how the ICU staff would really react, but it didn’t matter.
“You’d do that mommy?” she brightened.
“Of course I would, baby.”
And that was the end of it. She believed me because I had done the exact same thing (except for the ICU and climbing-into-bed parts) when my sister was alone in labour in 2003 during SarsCov1. I marched in, covered in PPE from head to toe, and sat with her during my lunch break. There are some advantages to being a doctor. Thankfully, young, healthy people like my daughter don’t typically end up in the ICU due to Covid, but my fearless response to her worry turned out to be the right medicine for my little one.
Does my experience as a practising physician make me an expert on the subject of death and dying? Not really. The real experts on this subject are the dead, but they can’t tell us very much. Lucky for us, there are a few exceptions. In Orthodoxy we have many examples of saints who joyfully died for something far better than this life, and who even encouraged their beloved children to martyr for Christ. Their love for Him surpassed their fear of death. We also have witnessed miracles and personal testimonials of life after death from some individuals who claim to have died and returned back to this life. All of us love these stories but few of us, myself included, can really relate, because we cannot picture ourselves in them. They tend to be the exception rather than the rule. What, therefore, can I offer, as an ordinary and unworthy Orthodox physician, to describe something about death on a more personally experiential level?
I remember intensely fearing death. Even after pronouncing people dead on the wards, I panicked at my first wake as I approached my first open casket. Perhaps it was the casket and the association of being buried in the ground that frightened me, but when I laid eyes on the lifeless body inside, the body of another doctor, I realized instantly that that was not really him. The real him was his life-giving soul, which was no longer there in his body. I had always known that but seeing it for the first time somehow seared it into the memory of my experience. That life had gone somewhere else. and with it went my fear of “six feet under.”
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There was another time when I had a panic attack as a patient on a hospital gurney while waiting to be wheeled into the operating room. I had suddenly thought, “What if I have an out-of-body experience? What if something goes wrong and I die?” I was not ready to meet God. Instead of praying for His mercy, I began desperately bargaining with Him. It didn’t help. When I was wheeled in and hooked up, my panic could be clearly heard, rapidly beeping on the monitor. It only subsided when the anaesthetic took over.
At my two-week post-operative appointment, the surgeon asked how I was feeling. I told him the leg felt just fine, but for some reason, I couldn’t get my act together. I felt exhausted and unmotivated, as if the life had been sucked out of me. Even my eyes looked empty and lifeless in the mirror. He said, “Don’t worry about it. This is normal. It’s post-operative depression because you handed over your life and your control into the hands of others who could make mistakes. It’ll pass in a couple of weeks.” And it did, which means it actually was “normal.”
“Wow,” I thought, “you learn something every day.”
The next time I needed surgery, I found myself staring at the OR ceiling, again wondering at all the possible outcomes. This time, I resisted giving into fear and bargaining. Instead, I gave myself and my control completely over to God, glorifying Him for all things. Gratitude felt joyous and freeing, and there was no post-op depression afterwards.
When I contemplate my death, which I find myself doing more and more as the years go by, my mind does not automatically take me back to those surgical experiences. It takes me back to those times I was giving birth to one of my children. I was not actually dying, of course, but it felt as though I was. Each birthing experience was very different, but what stayed the same was what I did not want—the excruciating pain and an audience. Despite the pain, I still chose natural birth to reduce the risk of complications. Under no circumstances, however, did I want an audience—those well-meaning family members, witnessing my pain, comparing it to theirs when they had children, offering advice and cheering me along, as if I was performing some type of athletic feat. Except for the presence of my husband, who suffered along with me, and the seasoned nurse or doctor, who understood, I just wanted privacy. I wanted aloneness.
Being in labour always brought me face to face with the Fall of Humanity. The agonizing curse of labour felt too humbling and humiliating to share, even with those who had already experienced it and meant well. Labour pains entered human history along with Death, which is a blessing from our all-merciful God. Without death, there can be no end to sin and no new Life in Paradise. However, it is a hard and difficult blessing. It reminds me of the joke: Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die. Labour is a type of death, which births new life. Therefore, those birthing pains, those mini deaths that brought the lives of my children into my own life, were both personal and sacred. This is why I did it again and again. My love for my children, even before their conception, surpassed my fears of pain and death. After risking my life to help create new ones, at no time would I want my children to mess up their own lives (with panic-stricken Covid measures, for instance) to save mine.
However, I think the main reason I wanted aloneness during labour was so I could focus, undistracted, on the task at hand. The long hours of painful labour forced me to reconcile with God and resolve my anger over Eve’s curse. For that, I needed every ounce of spiritual strength I could muster. I had no energy or interest in performing so as to not disappoint or to mitigate the anxieties of amateur labour coach so-and-so next to me, when what I really needed was to come out of that agonizing trial on the right side of Faith.
I imagine dying the same way. The more I think about it, the more I prefer to die alone, or at least inconspicuously. Should I be blessed with the opportunity for Confession, Communion, and having given and received forgiveness, I then imagine aloneness, unburdened from worrying about the needs of anyone around me, while I prepare to meet my Maker. I imagine birthing my soul, in a delivery room of sorts, utterly stripped of every last shred of dignity, completely humbled and humiliated by my ravaged body (like Christ on the Cross), but all in the presence of my merciful Lord for whom my soul yearns, because only He, our Great Physician, can deliver it and wash it in His precious blood.
Perhaps this is why every freshly dead corpse I have seen (and I have seen many prior to the work of the embalmer) has a look of awe and joy frozen on its face. Despite the still apparent ravages of the illness that killed them, all of these faces are beautiful to behold. They are like windows into paradise that give me great hope for the future.
It is human to feel afraid. Even Christ felt terrified on the night of His betrayal, but when He faced His fears because of His love for us and willingly died on the Cross, He annihilated Death and gave new Life to the whole world. His suffering was His labour of Love. O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory? (1 Corinthians 15:55) It is gone forever, lost in the glory of His awesome Resurrection…
Irene Polidoulis MD, CCFP, FCFP – an Orthodox Christian in Canada
My father sold cemetery property for twenty years, and before that he was a Baptist pastor. He told me that when your parents are dying, the words they need to hear are, “I will be okay.”
“It is human to feel afraid. Even Christ felt terrified on the night of His betrayal, but when He faced His fears because of His love for us and willingly died on the Cross”
Where did you ever come up with this notion that our Lord, the God-man was ‘terrified’ of dying?
I’m sick of hear about Covid. I’ve warned from the start that the elite were using this and would not allow it to end. It is all fake, except the agenda and the hysteria they generated by their nonstop media coverage and cruel isolation measures. Every death is Covid, they claim. Haven’t people always died? Every day? What happened to those types of deaths? Did they stop or were they now called Covid? Evil is rising.
The Synoptic Gospels have preserved for us another significant episode in the series of events leading to the Passion, namely, the agony and prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:39-46).
Although Jesus was the Son of God, He was destined as a man to accept fully the human condition, to experience suffering, and to learn obedience. Divesting Himself of divine prerogatives, the Son of God assumed the role of a servant. He lived truly human existence. Though He was Himself sinless, He allied Himself with the whole human race, identified with the human predicament, and experienced the same tests (Philippians 2:6-11; Hebrews 2:9-18).
The moving events in the Garden of Gethsemane dramatically and poignantly disclosed the human nature of Christ. The sacrifice He was to endure for the salvation of the world was imminent. Death, with all its brutal force and fury, stared directly at Him. Its terrible burden and fear – the calamitous results of the ancestral sin – caused Him intense sorrow and pain (Hebrews 5:7). Instinctively, as man, He sought to escape it. He found Himself in a moment of decision. In His agony He prayed to His Father, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt” (Mark 14:36).
His prayer revealed the depths of His agony and sorrow. It revealed as well His “incomparable spiritual strength (and) immovable desire and decision . . . to bring about the will of the Father.” Jesus offered His unconditional love and trust to the Father. He reached the extreme limits of self-denial “not what I will” – in order to accomplish His Father’s will. His acceptance of death was not some kind of stoic passivity and resignation but an act of absolute love and obedience. In that moment of decision, when He declared His acceptance of death to be in agreement with the Father’s will, He broke the power of the fear of death with all its attending uncertainties, anxieties, and limitations. He learned obedience and fulfilled the divine plan (Hebrews 5:8-9).
And she is also upset with the singular focus on Covid deaths, which is why she included two paragraphs on the unreliability of Covid death statistics, and how all the other deaths caused by our anti-Covid measures matter just as much.
Dear OR Staff, you gave a very eloquent Christological summary on the nature of Christ. Here is some more background:
The First (325 A.D.) and Second (381 A.D.) Ecumenical Councils and the Creed of Faith
Early in the fourth century, two controversies arose within the Church. The first of these was the date Easter should be celebrated. Until that time, some celebrated Easter with the Jewish Passover, others during any given week, and still others on a given Sunday. The Council decreed that Easter would be celebrated according to the old Julian calendar (introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C.) of the time, with the following formula: The first Sunday that came after the spring vernal equinox (equal daylight & night time hours) and after the first full moon. After the Great Schism, Roman Catholics and Protestants began celebrating Easter according to the new Gregorian calendar, which is why the two Easter dates are almost always different.
The second controversy was the Arian controversy, which challenged the divinity of Christ. Arius was a priest in Alexandria who taught that if Jesus was born, there must have been a time He did not exist. Therefore, if He became God, there must have been a time He was not God. Thus, He was not of the same substance of God. Arianism was one of the first serious dogmatic difficulties the Church encountered. As no one had as yet put into words exactly what the Church believed about the nature of Jesus, a quarrel arose between Arius and the Patriarch Alexander of Alexandria. To solve the problem, Constantine the Great called a meeting of all the Bishops of the Empire. This was the First Ecumenical (Universal) Council, which assembled in Nicaea, Asia Minor, in 325 A.D. 318 Bishops attended this meeting.
The First Ecumenical Council declared Arius’ teaching as heretical (false). According to the Council, God took on human flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ who was homoousios (of the same essence) with God the Father. St. Athanasius the Great, also from Alexandria, was a young Deacon at the time, who helped put into words what the Church had taught about the nature of Christ from the time of the Apostles. This became the first articles of the Nicene Creed:
We believe in one God, the All Governing Father, creator of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father as only begotten, that is, from the essence of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father, through whom all things came into being, both in heaven and on earth; Who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate, becoming human. He suffered and the third day He rose, and ascended into the heavens. And He will come to judge both the living and the dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit. But, those who say, Once he was not, or he was not before his generation, or he came to be out of nothing, or who assert that he, the Son of God, is of a different hypostasis or ousia, or that he is a creature, or changeable, or mutable, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.
The First Ecumenical Council defined in the Creed that Jesus Christ was of the same essence as God the Father, but that did not put a stop to the Arian controversy. After Constantine the Great died in 337 A.D, his son, Constantius became ruler of the Byzantine Empire. He favoured Arianism and constantly came into conflict with the Christians who favoured the Nicene Creed. After his death in 361 A.D., his cousin, Julian, inherited the throne. Julian was called the Apostate because he tried to revive paganism by fuelling the conflict between the Arians and the Nicaeans.
To cause discord among the Christians, Julian brought back the exiled Arian bishops and gave them full preaching privileges in the Church. He also gave many privileges to those who denounced Christianity. He made it very difficult for Christians to receive an education or to teach in any schools. As his hatred of Christianity grew, he began closing Churches and Christian schools. In 363 A.D. Julian died after being mortally wounded in battle. His last words were, “You have won, Oh Galilean.” Julian was followed by lesser rulers who were eventually succeeded by Theodosius the Great (379 – 395 A.D.). When Theodosius ascended the throne, he faced two difficult problems: 1) the disunity of the Empire that had been caused by the Arian controversy, and 2) the attacks of the barbaric Germans and Goths who were threatening the security of the whole Empire. Theodosius openly supported the Nicaean Creed and gave the last blow to paganism by proclaiming Christianity the official religion of the Empire in 380 A.D. The following year, he called into session the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople.
The Second Ecumenical Council approved all the decisions of the First council. It also condemned a new heresy by Macedonius, who preached that the Holy Spirit was inferior to the Father and the Son in the Holy Trinity. In addition Arianism was still a problem. To stamp out Arianism, Apollinarius, Bishop of Laodicea, came up with the idea that Christ was God, but needed a human body to appear before men. He taught that Christ had a normal human body but a divine mind instead of a regular human soul. This compromised Christ’s human nature making it secondary to His divine nature. Bishops Diodore and Theodore, Christian scholars and teachers from the theological School of Antioch, disagreed with his teaching. They maintained that Christ had to be God to offer salvation to Humanity; but He also had to be fully human to make His human self-sacrifice for the redemption of all people. The Council Fathers condemned Apollinarius’ heresy. They also combatted the heresy of Macedonius by completing the Creed of Faith with the addition of five more articles to the first seven articles of the Nicene Creed. The additional five articles established the Trinitarian Doctrine, in which the Holy Spirit is equal to the Father, who is equal to the Son. Finally, the Council established the rank of the Patriarch of Constantinople in relation to the Bishop of Rome by declaring, “the Bishop of Constantinople shall rank next to the Bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is the New Rome.” At this Council, 150 Bishops were present, who revised the Creed of Faith to its current form, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed:
We believe in one God, the Father All Governing, creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all time, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father, through Whom all things came into being, Who for us men and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and ascended to heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His Kingdom shall have no end. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, Who proceeds from the Father, Who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, Who spoke through the prophets; And in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism for the remission of sins. We look forward to the resurrection and the life of the world to come. Amen.
The First and Second Ecumenical Councils defined that Christ had always been God and emphasized both His divine and His human nature. This was a challenging task for them at that time because although the New Testament literature existed, it had not yet been compiled and standardized as such so as to be used as an easy reference. Nevertheless, the Councils correctly argued that Jesus is fully God – not someone who is a lot like God, or very close with God, but the Most High God himself. In addition, Christ was completely human, with a human body and a human soul. In other words, He was consubstantial (of the same substance) with us. As Gregory the Theologian put it, “that which is not assumed is not healed.” In other words, if Christ did not become completely human, He could not completely heal our broken humanity and restore us to our original purpose.
The Third (431 A.D.), Fourth (451 A.D.) and Fifth (553 A.D.) Ecumenical Councils on Christ’s Dual Nature
After the Second Ecumenical Council, arguments continued about the true nature of Christ. Nestorius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, argued that His divinity and humanity could not be truly united but rather appeared that way. He opposed the concept of a hypostatic union (a dual but undivided existence) and emphasized a radical distinction between Christ’s two natures (human and divine). Nestorius also claimed that the Virgin Mary should not be called Theotokos (God-bearer) because she gave birth to Christ, not God; rather, she should be called Christotokos (Christ-bearer). To combat this heresy, St. Cyril of Alexandria explained the incarnation as divinity and humanity truly uniting in Christ. Hence, it is befitting that His mother be called Theotokos and that the Son of God be said to have suffered in the flesh.
Nestorianism became so widespread that the Third Ecumenical Council was called into session at Ephesus, Asia Minor, in 431 A.D. The Council fathers condemned Nestorius, and his heretical teachings. The Council proclaimed that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was both complete God and complete man with a soul and a body. In addition, the Holy Virgin is Theotokos because she gave birth to God who became man and that the union of the divine and human natures of Christ took place in such a fashion that they were not divided and one did not disturb the other.
After the Third Ecumenical Council, a monk by the name of Eutychus started a new heresy in order to emphasize Christ’s divine nature. He claimed that Christ started out with both divine and human natures, but at some point, the divine nature consumed and eliminated the human nature. As a result, Christ ended up with only one nature, the divine. Followers of this heresy were later known as Monophysites (one nature). The Church responded to this heresy in the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. This Council condemned Monophysitism and re-emphasized Christ’s two complete natures, the divine and the human. Each nature remained with its complete integrity from the moment of Christ’s conception (incarnation) to His death and resurrection. Furthermore, these two natures were united, functioned without confusion, were not divided, were not separate or distinct and at no time underwent any change.
The Monophysite heresy of Eutychus was unlike any other, with many followers in Egypt and Syria. After Theodosius the Great, the last Emperor to simultaneously rule both the eastern and western parts of the empire, a succession of weak emperors followed, which caused the empire to decline. During this decline, the Monophysite churches broke away from the Empire. Several emperors later attempted reunion but with no success. The tide of the Church and the empire finally turned with Justinian the Great who came to the throne in 527 A.D. and ruled as one of the greatest emperors of Byzantium. Among other accomplishments, he was responsible for building St. Sophia Church in Constantinople and for developing the Code of Civil Law, which the modern world still uses as a basis for the structure of laws.
By the time of Justinian, the Arian Controversy had made its way into Western Europe and Monophysitism resurfaced in Eastern Europe. Justinian called the Fifth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 553 A.D. and the Church confirmed and declared once and for all the teachings of the Church regarding the two Natures of Jesus Christ. By the seventh century, Monophysitism was eliminated, followed by Arianism in the 8th century. However, they both re-emerged again and again over the centuries under different names, such as the modern day Jehovah’s Witnesses who believe in Arian teachings.
While the 1st and 2nd Ecumenical Councils defined that Christ is, and always has been God, the 3rd, 4th and 5th Ecumenical Councils defined that Christ is human. However, He has not always been human. The eternal God became human through His miraculous incarnation (taking on a human body and soul). In so doing, Jesus did not give up any of his divinity. As one of the early theologians put it, “Remaining what He was, He became what He was not.” Christ “was not now God minus some elements of his deity, but God plus all that He had made His own by taking manhood to Himself.“ At the Incarnation, Jesus did not give up any of His divine attributes. For if he were to do so, he would cease to be God. As God, He fully entered into our humanity that we may fully enter into His divinity to receive not only salvation but also deification, which was His original plan for us at the time of our creation.
Christ’s divinity is supported numerous times in Scripture. Titus 2:13 says that Christians are “looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.” Upon seeing the resurrected Christ, Thomas cried out, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). In Hebrews 1:8 we read, “But of the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” and the gospel of John calls Jesus “the only begotten God” (John 1:18).
Jesus has all the attributes of God. He knows everything (Mat. 16:21; Luke 11:17; John 4:29), is everywhere (Mat. 18:20; 28:20; Acts 18:10), has all power (Mat. 8:26-27; 28:18; John 11:38-44; Luke 7:14-15; Revelation 1:8), depends on nothing outside of Himself for life (John 1:4; 14:6; 8: 58), rules over everything (Mat. 28:18; Revelation 1:5; 19:16), never began to exist and will never cease to exist (John 1:1; 8:58) and is our Creator (Colossians 1:16). Hence, everything that God is, Jesus is, because Jesus is God. In this manner, the First and Second Ecumenical Councils clarified Christ’s divine nature. His divine nature, however, is equally important to His human nature.
In Scripture, the Apostle John teaches how denying that Jesus is man, is of the spirit of the antichrist (1 John 4:2; 2 John:7). Jesus displayed His humanity through His birth as a baby from a human mother (Luke 2:7; Galatians 4:4), by becoming weary (John 4:6), thirsty (John 19:28), and hungry (Mat. 4:2). He also experienced the full range of human emotions such as marvel (Mat. 8:10) and sorrow (John 11:35). According to Scripture, Jesus is not partially, but fully human. Everything that belongs to the essence of true humanity is true of Him. He has a human body (Luke 24:39), a human mind (Luke 2:52) and a human soul (Matthew 26:38). Furthermore, even though He was tempted in all ways (Hebrews 4:15), Jesus is a sinless man (1 Peter 2:22; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Luke 1:35; 1 John 3:5; 1Peter 1:18-19).
In this manner, all the Councils established that Christ is fully divine and fully human:“For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.” (Colossians 2:9). Furthermore, Christ will be God forever, but He will also be human forever. Scripture clearly states that Jesus rose physically from the dead in the same body in which He had died (Luke 24:39) and then ascended into heaven in His physical body (Acts 1:9; Luke 24:50-51). When He returns it will again be as a man in His body. At His second coming, Christ “will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory.” (Philippians 3:21). This clarifies that Jesus still has His body, which is a glorified body; and He will transform our bodies to be like His. We will then continue to live with Him in our glorified bodies forever, because the resurrection body cannot die (1 Corinthians 15:42) since it is eternal (2 Corinthians 5:1).
The Epistle to the Hebrews supports that God became man and will be man forever so that Christ could be an adequate Savior who has all that Humanity needs.
“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood [i.e. have a body], He Himself likewise partook of the same things [i.e.took on a body], that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that He helps, but He helps the offspring of Abraham [i.e. humans] . Therefore He had to be made like his brothers in every respect [i.e. fully human], so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation[make up for] for the sins of the people. For because He himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.” (Hebrews 2:14-18).
According to this passage, Jesus became man (“partook of the same things”) so that He could die for our sins. He had to be human so that as a second Adam He could undo the sin of disobedience of the first Adam. As High Priest, He was in charge of the supreme sacrifice – Himself – to pay the consequence for humans. Because Jesus is human, He is able to be a merciful and faithful High Priest, one that can sympathize and identify with us because He knows our struggles, temptations and weaknesses. In order to accomplish all of this, Jesus needed to be the perfect human, who was capable of complete obedience to the will of God the Father, even as far as dying on the Cross, with no sins of his own. Since Humanity had fallen so far from God and no perfect human existed, Jesus who is divine, came as a human because only He could be the perfect One who could accomplish the salvation of Humanity. Therefore it was necessary for our salvation that Jesus be fully God and fully human.
The Council Fathers understood that a correct belief in Christ’s dual nature, united in His one hypostasis, was essential for the Church to carry out her salvific role. It is therefore understandable that Christology was the subject of so much heated and passionate debate in the early Church.
Emperor Heraclius and The Sixth (680 A.D.) Ecumenical Council on the Wills of Christ
Heraclius ascended the Byzantine throne in 610 A.D. He had excelled as a military strategist and was a popular leader. His greatest asset was his compassion for the people he ruled. He once said, “power must shine more in love than in terror.”
While Heraclius was fighting the Persians, the Church was still fighting new heresies. One of these was to say that yes, Jesus did have two natures, the divine and the human, but His human nature was motivated and influenced by the divine. In other words, the divine nature made all the decisions and the human nature carried them out involuntarily. This new teaching was called Monothelitism (one will, one initiative – the divine will), which meant that the human nature of Christ had no free will of its own. It was just another type of Monophysitism which was again re-emerging. During this time, a monk, St. Maximus the Confessor, left his monastery to travel and preach against this heresy, which was supported by Heraclius’ successor and several Eastern Bishops and Patriarchs. St. Maximus was viewed as a heretic himself, and was arrested and tortured, losing his tongue and his right hand. He died in exile in 662 A.D. Because of his efforts, however, the Sixth Ecumenical Council was eventually convened in Constantinople in 680 A.D.
The Council canonized Maximus as a saint and condemned Monothelitism, proclaiming, “Christ has two natures with two activities – as God working miracles, rising from the dead and ascending into Heaven; as man, performing the ordinary acts of daily life. Each nature exercises its own free will.” In other words, Christ’s human nature willingly obeyed His divine nature. This is an important point because if Humanity was created by God with free will, how can we assert that Jesus Christ was fully human if his humanity lacked free will? A beautiful example of Christ’s human will struggling to obey the divine will can be found in Luke 22:42, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” This heresy quickly disappeared.
Thus far, all the Ecumenical Councils established the following:
1. Christ has two natures – He is both God and man, possessing a divine nature and a human nature
2. Each nature is full and complete – He is fully God and fully man
3. Each nature remains distinct – they do not intermix to form a third type of nature
4. Christ is only one Person – with two natures united in one Person, He will be both God and man forever
5. Things that are true of only one nature but not the other, are still true of the whole Person of Christ.
6. Christ possesses two wills – divine will and human will, where the human will willingly submits to the divine will.
Holy Scripture also teaches that while Christ has two distinct and unchanged natures, he nonetheless remains one Person. In John 1:14 we read, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Here we see the two natures: the Word (His deity) and flesh (humanity). Yet we also see that there is one Person, for the Word became flesh, meaning a unity of the two natures. Additional Scriptures relating to this can be found in Romans 8:3; Galatians 4:4;1 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 2:11-14 and 1 John 4:2-3.
Furthermore, Jesus never spoke of himself as “We,” but always as “I.” Also, many biblical passages refer to both natures of Christ, but it is clear that only one Person is intended. The following passages clearly affirm Christ’s two natures in one Person:
“For what the law could not do… God did: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh . . .” (Romans 8:3). “But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law . . .” (Galatians 4:4) “. . . who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped [that is, exploited to His own advantage], but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:6-7).
Finally, there are things that are true of Christ’s human nature that are not true of His divine nature. For example, His divine nature could never be hungry, but His human nature did hunger. Therefore, the Person of Christ hungered. Things that are true of one nature but not of the other are still true of the whole Person of Christ. If there is something that only one of Christ’s natures did, He can still say, “I did it.” For example, Jesus says in John 8:58, “. . . before Abraham was, I am.” Now, Christ’s human nature did not exist before Abraham. It is Christ’s divine nature that eternally exists before Abraham. Since Christ is one person, He could say that before Abraham was, He is. Another example is Christ’s death. We cannot speak of Christ’s death as the death of God because God cannot die. But humans can die, and Jesus’ human nature did die. Thus, even though Jesus’s divine nature did not die, we can still say that the Person of Christ experienced death because of the union of the two natures in the one Person of Christ.
From Apostolic times to the present, heresies (false doctrines or teachings) have not ceased to challenge the Church. Each time, the Church has responded to a heretical doctrine using three criteria: Apostolicity (taught by the Apostles who received it from Christ), Catholicity (jointly taught by all of the Apostles and accepted by the entire Church) and Conformity (to Holy Scripture). These criteria are known as the New Testament Canon. The same criteria can be used today to combat new heresies, many of which are old heresies that are resurfacing with a modern twist. One such example is Gnosticism, which first appeared in the 2nd century and keeps resurfacing in modern times, such as in the 2006 film, The Da Vinci Code. Gnostics claim to have secret knowledge about God, humanity and the rest of the Universe.