Luther tells the humorous story of the drunken German who, after falling off his horse on one side, climbs back up only to fall immediately off the other side. In that story Luther was illustrating the habit of theologians to err by racing from pillar to post by staking out a position that is opposite to their opponents' and in that way to fall into an opposite extreme. The opposite of heresy isn't always the truth but often it is more heresy. The theological argument that begins with the words, "Oh yeah! I'll show you..." probably doesn't work out very well.

This is not by any means a new problem. In the battles over the two natures, one person doctrine of Christology in the ancient church such equine follies abounded. The classic case was the clumsy attempts of Eutyches to defeat Nestorianism by pushing the doctrines of Cyril of Alexandria too far. Nestorius had taught that the two natures in Christ were relatively unrelated, and so the unity of the person of Christ suffered in favor of the inviolate integrity of the human and divine natures. No union between the human and divine was possible. Nestorius seemed to conceive of the two natures as two boards that had been glued together, as though Jesus was two persons. Today, we would suspect such a Christ of schizophrenia, although even a schizophrenic might be better integrated than the Nestorian Christ. Eutyches thought that he would benefit the church and support Cyril of Alexandria's views by claiming that the Word of God assumed the humanity into a single nature. He was bent upon striking a decisive blow against Nestorius, but of course simply fell off the horse on the other side. Leo the Great was scornful of Eutyches and rightly so.

"After the Lord's resurrection (which, of course, was of His true body, because He was raised the same as He had died and been buried), what else was effected by the forty days' delay than the cleansing of our faith's purity from all darkness? For to that end He talked with His disciples, and dwelt and ate with them, He allowed Himself to be handled with diligent and curious touch by those who were affected by doubt. He entered when the doors were shut upon the Apostles, and by His breathing upon them gave them the Holy Spirit (Jn 20:22), and bestowing on them the light of understanding, opened the secrets of the Holy Scriptures (Lk 24:27). So again He showed the wound in His side, the marks of the nails, and all the signs of His quite recent suffering, saying, 'See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have' (Lk 24:39); in order that the properties of His divine and human nature might be acknowledged to remain still inseparable: and that we might know the Word not to be different from the flesh, in such a sense as also to confess that the one Son of God is both the Word and flesh.