Teacher Notes: Unit 5, Jesus Christ, True God and True Man
Why this unit matters
Students usually arrive with one of two half-pictures of Jesus. One is a great moral teacher, admired but not worshipped. The other is God in disguise, who only seemed to be tired, afraid or tempted. This unit holds both halves together, following the order of the early councils: Nicaea (true God), Constantinople and Chalcedon (true man), Ephesus and Chalcedon (one Person), then the Creed’s historical claims.
Teaching the councils as a story of questions and answers works far better than a list of dates. Each heresy was a reasonable-sounding simplification, and each answer protected something students care about: that God really saves us, and that he really shares our life.
By the end of the unit, students should be able to:
- give evidence from Jesus’ words and deeds, and from the earliest Christians, that he was worshipped as God;
- explain what Nicaea defined, and why Athanasius thought it mattered for salvation;
- name the heresies that denied Christ’s body, mind and will, and explain Gregory of Nazianzus’s principle;
- state the Chalcedonian definition and use the communication of idioms correctly;
- distinguish the virginal conception from the Immaculate Conception;
- outline the historical evidence for the Resurrection, and explain what a glorified body is.
A shape for a 50-minute lesson
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 5 min | Put the big question on the board. Take three or four answers without correcting them. |
| 15 min | Read What the Church teaches and Where it comes from together. |
| 15 min | Teacher-led explanation, using the lesson’s table. |
| 10 min | Discussion question, or work through What the Church does not claim. |
| 5 min | Students attempt two Check your understanding questions before opening the answers. |
Lesson by lesson
5.1 True God
Goal: students can show that belief in Christ’s divinity goes back to Jesus himself and the first Christians.
Activity: give pairs the passages from the lesson (Mark 2:1–12; John 8:56–59; John 10:30–33; Mark 14:60–64). For each, ask: what does Jesus claim, and how do his hearers react? The hearers’ reactions are often the clearest evidence of what they understood him to mean.
Discussion questions:
- Why do you think Jesus rarely said “I am God” directly?
- Athanasius argued that only God can save us. Do you agree? Why?
Misconceptions to watch for:
- “The early Christians thought Jesus was just a prophet; the Church made him God later.” Point to Pliny and Ignatius.
- “Son of God means he’s less than God.” In Jesus’ case it names a relation within God (Unit 3).
5.2 True man
Goal: students can name the three heresies about Christ’s humanity and explain why each was rejected.
Discussion questions:
- Does it change anything for you that Jesus wept, was afraid and was tempted?
- Why is “what was not assumed was not healed” such a powerful principle?
Misconceptions to watch for:
- “Jesus knew he’d win, so his suffering wasn’t real.” Gethsemane shows real anguish.
- “If Jesus couldn’t sin, his temptations were fake.” He felt the pull of temptation; sinlessness is not the absence of struggle.
- “Jesus’ human mind was the divine mind.” He had a real human mind that learned.
On Christ’s knowledge: keep this light. Students need to know that Jesus learned in a human way (Luke 2:52) and that the tradition also holds he had a unique knowledge of the Father and his mission. Detailed questions about his human consciousness are best left to the extension readings.
5.3 One Person, two natures
Goal: students can state Chalcedon and apply the communication of idioms.
Activity: right or wrong? Give students ten statements to judge using the rules in the lesson: “God was born in Bethlehem”; “The divinity of Christ suffered”; “Mary is the Mother of God”; “The man Jesus created the world”; “The Son of God was hungry”; “Christ’s human nature is eternal”; and so on. Have them explain each answer.
Discussion questions:
- Why did it matter so much to the early Church whether Mary could be called Mother of God?
- How are the errors of Nestorius and Eutyches opposite mistakes?
Ecumenical note. As with the Filioque in Unit 3, present the ancient divisions fairly, and mention the recent Christological agreements: many of these splits involved words as much as beliefs.
5.4 Born of a virgin, risen from the dead
Goal: students can outline the evidence for the Resurrection and explain the glorified body.
Activity: the investigator. Divide the class into groups, each taking one alternative explanation (stolen body, hallucination, Jesus didn’t die, legend). Each group presents its theory, and the class tests it against the five facts in the lesson’s table.
Discussion questions:
- Why might the Church insist on a bodily resurrection, rather than just the survival of Jesus’ soul?
- What does Paul mean when he says that without the Resurrection our faith is in vain?
Misconceptions to watch for:
- “The virgin birth is the Immaculate Conception.” The single most common confusion; correct it now and again in Unit 7.
- “The Resurrection is about the disciples’ feelings.” The Church teaches a historical, bodily event.
- “The risen Jesus was a spirit.” Luke 24:39.
Answer key
The answers to every Check your understanding question also appear on the lesson pages behind Show answer, and are left off printed handouts.
Lesson 5.1: (1) True God, begotten not made, of the same substance as the Father. (2) Any two of: forgiving sins; “before Abraham was, I am”; “I and the Father are one”; judge of all. (3) The New Testament; Ignatius’s “our God”; Pliny’s report of hymns to Christ “as to a god”. (4) Arius: the Son is the greatest creature. Athanasius: only God can save us. (5) His claims were only true if he is God; otherwise he was not a good teacher.
Lesson 5.2: (1) Any three of: body, soul, mind, will, human way of acting. (2) Docetism: a real body. Apollinarianism: a human mind. Monothelitism: a human will. (3) Christ heals by taking on; what he did not take on would not be healed. (4) His human will shrank from suffering yet freely followed the Father’s will. (5) Yes; sin is a damage to human nature, not part of it.
Lesson 5.3: (1) The union of two natures in the one divine Person of the Son. (2) Nestorius: two subjects, not Mother of God (Ephesus). Eutyches: one nature (Chalcedon). (3) Without confusion, change, division or separation. (4) “God died” is correct (the Person is God); “the divinity died” is wrong (the divine nature cannot die). (5) A mother is mother of a person, and the Person she bore is God.
Lesson 5.4: (1) Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, without a human father. (2) An early summary from within a few years, naming many witnesses. (3) Women’s testimony carried little weight, so an inventor would not have chosen them. (4) Lazarus returned to ordinary life and died again; Christ’s body is glorified and immortal. (5) The entry of Christ’s humanity into God’s glory.