the Messiah—the very subject under discussion, the one to whom the predicate and ruling apply—is, according to them, a perfect man and a perfect God. That proposition inevitably means that the man himself must be the very same being as God himself.
If someone were to make such a claim about created beings—for example, to say, “The king’s soul is the same as the soul of commoners”—its falsehood would be plain for all to see. How, then, can such a statement be uttered concerning the Lord of the worlds?
What makes the matter still more extraordinary is that many Christians do not admit that the Messiah’s body is created; instead, they attribute divinity to the whole of him. This follows from the pronouncements of their leading authorities who declare, “The Messiah is a perfect God,” yet they contradict themselves by adding, “and He is a perfect man.” It is as though they were saying, “He is the Creator and yet not the Creator; He is created and yet not created.” In so doing they combine two mutually exclusive opposites—and that, in truth, is the essence of the Christian doctrine.
Moreover, in their view the union of the divinity (lahut) with the humanity (nasut) of the Messiah is a necessary, inseparable union that never leaves him; consequently it is more absolute than any accidental union. It is therefore even more far-fetched than claiming that the Lord was united first with a body that had no soul, then with that body after the soul was breathed into it, then with the body again after the soul departed from it, while it lay buried in the grave beneath the earth.
It is common knowledge that when a living person, soul still within him, is placed in the earth, the soul suffers intense torment before it finally departs. Yet—astonishingly—they assert that the Messiah was crucified and died, that the rational soul left him so that the body was lifeless, and that nevertheless the divinity remained united with him and never abandoned him while he lay in the tomb. Thus they make the union of the divinity with him more intimate than the union of the soul with the body.