At the center of Christian proclamation stands the claim that Jesus Christ is at once fully God and fully human. This is not a metaphysical quirk but the necessary condition for a genuine atonement: only one who is divine can bear infinite worth to atone for sin, and only one who is human can represent fallen humanity in the broken world. The classical doctrine of the incarnation insists on both natures without confusion—a paradox to be held with theological precision, not philosophical despair.

The New Testament presents a portrait of Jesus that combines pre-existent divinity and real human experience. He is portrayed as creator and sustainer, receiving worship, speaking with divine authority, yet also experiencing hunger, fatigue, sorrow, and death. This dual testimony resists facile reductions. If Christ were only divine appearing as human, then his suffering would be an illusion; if he were only human exalted to divine status, then his redemptive action would lack infinite sufficiency.

The Chalcedonian formula—two natures united in one person, “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation”—provides the theological grammar necessary to maintain coherence. It guards against Nestorianism, which would split Christ into two persons, and Eutychianism, which would amalgamate his natures into an indistinct hybrid. The result is a unity of personhood that authentically bears both the properties of deity and the properties of humanity.