Nature of Jesus

Methodist Christology is fully orthodox in the Chalcedonian sense: Jesus Christ is one divine person in two natures, fully divine and fully human, without confusion or separation. The Methodist Articles of Religion (Article II) confess that the Son, the Word of the Father, took on man's nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin by the operation of the Holy Spirit, so that two whole and perfect natures — the divine and the human — were joined together in one person. Christ suffered, died, rose, and ascended as fully human while remaining fully divine.

Wesley's soteriology makes the two-nature doctrine directly relevant to salvation: Christ must be fully human in order to represent and identify with humanity, and fully divine in order to make his atoning sacrifice of infinite worth. The Methodist Articles closely follow the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles in Christological formulation. Wesley's Christology and the hymns of Charles Wesley — particularly those focused on the Incarnation — have shaped Methodist spirituality's distinctive warmth toward the person of Jesus Christ.