The more I've studied Christology, the more I've realized that most of what is confessed positively historically in Christianity is the result of rejecting other ideas because of major problems with those other ideas. If we look, for example, at the confession put forward at Chalcedon it may look, at first glance, like it is trying to define "mechanically" how Jesus is God and man; but I think a closer look, especially placed in historical context, shows that it's far less about rigorously defining the Incarnation as it is rigorously rejecting certain ideas. The language is apophatic rather than cataphatic. The chief concern at Chalcedon was the views being put forward by Eutyches, whose radical anti-Nestorianism led him to saying that the union of Divine and humanity in Jesus was so great that, effectively, there is nothing human in Jesus left at all--effectively in Eutychian Christology Jesus was no longer one of us, a human being; but had a different kind of humanity, one that was like "a drop of vinegar in the ocean" (something Eutyches himself said). So Chalcedon was chiefly interested in rejecting Eutychianism, and so the point of the language was to affirm Jesus as really human, just like you and me (but without sin); so Jesus is of the same Essence as the Father (because He is God the Son) but Jesus is also of the same Essence as you and me, because He is fully and completely and really human.
It becomes far less about trying to narrowly define God, or narrowly squeeze Jesus and the mechanics of the Incarnation into a very small box; and it is much more about drawing lines in the sand where we cannot cross. We will never understand and know the deep Mystery of the Incarnation, or how the Incarnation "works"; that's not for us--but the meaning of the Incarnation, and what we say about it, cannot in some way actually reject it.
Jesus is God and man. He is God because He is the Word and Son of the Father. He is man because He's actually one of us, He did not merely appear as a man, but was (and is) a man. He had a human body, a human soul, a human mind, a human will, He had human emotions, He had human thoughts, He was one of us. And that isn't just some matter that high-falutin' smarty-pants philosophers and seminarian-trained theologians get to argue over while having a pint at a fancy restaurant or spilling ink on parchment; it's the sort of stuff that matters deep into the heart of Christian confession. Jesus is one of us, God became one of us, and it is His taking upon Himself what we are, that He saves us. That is Gospel stuff, this is blue-collar Christianity.
-CryptoLutheran
