“Widest Extremes to Join”: Christ Beyond Paradox in the Hymns of Charles Wesley

Abstract

Charles Wesley's doctrine of Christ has long been regarded as “paradoxical” by commentators such as John Lawson, S.T. Kimbrough, Paul Chilcote, and Jason Vickers. This paper will propose an alternative reading of Wesley's hymns on the nativity, suggesting that such poetic contrasts do not constitute paradox but are best read in light of the theology of Chalcedon and its subsequent debates. The paradoxical reading of the hymns bears a formal resemblance to two historically troublesome positions: the conjunction of irreconcilable natures as found in Nestorius, or the idea that a hypostasis corresponds to a singular physis as found in Severus of Antioch. This paper will read a selection of Wesley's more “paradoxical” claims alongside the christology of Cyril of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor to show that what appears as paradoxical—the contrasting predicates of Jesus Christ's two natures—is precisely the form of utterance that the hypostatic union enables.