paradoxum:: truth in tension

For the same reason it was also imperative that he who was to become our Redeemer be true God and true man. It was his task to swallow up death. Who but the Life could do this? It was his task to conquer sin. Who but very Righteousness could do this? It was his task to rout the powers of world and air. Who but a power higher than world or air could do this? Now where does life or righteousness or lordship and authority of heaven lie but with God alone? Therefore our most merciful God, when he willed that we be redeemed, made himself our Redeemer in the person of his only begotten Son.

The second requirement of our reconciliation with God was this: that man, who by his disobedience had become lost should by way of remedy counter it with obedience, satisfy God’s judgment and pay the penalties for sin. Accordingly, our Lord came forth as true man and took the person and the name of Adam in order to take Adam’s place in obeying the Father, to present our flesh as the price of satisfaction to God’s righteous judgment and in the same flesh to pay the penalty that we had deserved. In short since neither as God alone could he feel death, nor as man alone could he overcome it, he couple human nature with divine that to atone for sin he might submit the weakness of the one to death and that wrestling with death by the power of the other nature he might win victory for us” (Calvin, Institutes 2.12.3)