get one. There should be a number of them left on the back table as people come in. So feel free to grab one if you haven't already. And as we get started, I want to give a brief scheduling update. This is the second to last class of this quarter. And it's the last class that I'll actually be teaching, unfortunately. I have a preaching engagement next week. And so for the final class of Ancient Church History of this quarter, Dr. McGraw will be talking about Augustine. And that will be useful because Augustine in some ways is the culmination of this whole era. He is what you could call the last of the early church fathers. At the same time, he is a transitional figure to the Middle Ages. Alfred North Whitehead once said that all of Western philosophy is but footnotes to Plato. And there's a sense in which all of Western theology is but footnotes to Augustine. And so I know you're going to enjoy that last class that Lord willing, we'll tie all of the strands together. I wish I could be here, but duty calls elsewhere. But Dr. McGraw will be filling in for me. With that in mind, I want to begin this class with a question to elicit listener participation. What would you say are the two greatest mysteries of the Christian faith? Or you could even name one. What would you say is a supreme mystery of the Christian faith? Joseph. The incarnation. God became flesh and dwelt among us. Anything else? The Trinity. Well, G.I. Packer, when he was asked that question, gave that exact answer. He said the two great mysteries are the Trinity, how the one God exists in three persons, and then the incarnation. the mystery of the God man. And really that's the flow that we've been following. Last week we looked at councils concerning the Trinity, Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381, and today we're gonna wrap up the great ecumenical councils by looking at councils that concern the person of Jesus Christ, the mystery of the incarnation. With that in mind, let's read a passage of scripture that deals with just this truth. 1 Timothy 3, just one verse, verse 16. This is the word of the Lord. And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. Let us pray. Father, we come into your presence through the mediation of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the bond of the Holy Spirit. Lord, as we have contemplated the mystery of the Godhead, as we now turn our hearts and our minds to the mystery of the incarnation, we ask that we would do so with fear and trembling, that we would tread softly as we consider these great truths that concern who you are and what you have done in human history. O Lord, consecrate this time for Christ's sake, we pray. Amen. Well, hopefully by now everyone has a handout. This is your last opportunity. If you didn't get one, there should be some on the back table. And that'll just give you a little bit of a map of where we're going to head. And the first thing that I have on the handout is a thesis statement. And my thesis, kind of my agenda, is this observation. That in these councils we're going to look at today, In the Council, particularly of Ephesus in 431 and Chalcedon in 451, the Church learned never to separate Christ's distinct natures from his one person. In these councils, the Church learned never to separate Christ's distinct natures from His one person. Truly, He is the whole Christ in Himself, but also for us. That will be our main goal with this class. Just to give you a little idea of where we're gonna head, first we're gonna look at really one controversy in two parts. So you could call it two controversies concerning Christ. And each of those controversies will then spawn a council that will answer that problem. At the end of it all, we'll step back and assess the legacy of these church councils, the Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon. And in the midst of all this, we're going to look back to Nicaea, Constantinople in the 4th century, and telescope, Lord willing, all the way to the last ecumenical council in the 700s, the 8th century. So roughly a 400-year time period, but a focus on the fifth century and those councils that concern the Lord Jesus Christ. So controversy part one. If you're following along in your handout, this is the controversy of what we can call the schizophrenic Christ. The schizophrenic Christ. Just to give you some background, some earlier heresies that plagued the church. And we looked at these in earlier weeks, so I'll just touch on them here. But docetism, anyone remember what docetism taught? From the Greek word, dakeo, which means to appear or to seem. So docetism would mean what? Jesus, yes, pastoralist. He only appeared to seem to be man. He only appeared to be a man. Right. That was obviously a heresy. John the Apostle attacks by saying, no, he came in the flesh. Our hands handled him. The second big heresy that we talked about last week was Arianism. which taught that God, when he sent forth his son, that this son was really an exalted creature. He was neither fully God, nor was he fully man. He was a tertium quid, a third something or other. But he was not of the same substance with the father. Of course, Nicaea answered that problem, that heresy, with the Nicene Creed. But at this point, there's a shift. The church has affirmed that Christ is of the same substance with the Father. He's fully God, and they confess he's fully man. But how do those two natures relate to one another, the divine and the human? And one attempt early on to deal with this was by a bishop called Apollinaris. And that spawned a heresy that I've listed for you, Apollinarianism. And this view is, Jesus really did have a true human body. Contra-Docetism. No, he had a real body, flesh and blood, but he did not have a human soul. He did not have a human rational faculty. That was provided by the divine logos. You've got to think of it this way. It's God in a body. Use an analogy, you've got an envelope, that's the body, and into that envelope you slip a letter, that's the divine soul. What would be the problem with this view? He couldn't what? Okay, so maybe he couldn't be tempted, perhaps he's not fully human. He's fully God, but not fully human. Any other problems? Yes. That he could not say. Very insightful. I'm glad you brought that up, Mr. Christensen, because really the implications for this, it's not just Christology. Christology always affects soteriology. How you think about Jesus affects what we think of the way of salvation. And it's put so classically by Gregory of Nazianzus, one of those great Cappadocian fathers, when he said this. He said, what he did not assume. What he did not take to himself, he did not heal. In other words, if Jesus took to himself a true body, yes, he could redeem our bodies. But if he did not take to himself a full humanity, if he did not have a human soul, then our souls cannot be saved. What he did not assume, he did not heal. So this has radical implications for our doctrine of salvation. Well, this was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 381. That was the council we looked at last week that affirmed the full deity of the Holy Spirit, that clarified how the persons relate to one another, but it also condemned this heresy of Apollinarianism. And you might think, that's kind of irrelevant today? Who believes in Apollinarianism? I'm going to share a little anecdote that shows you that it actually is quite relevant. My grandfather is probably somewhere in his 80s now. He was a Baptist minister for many years. And he told me a story one time of when he was asked to be on an ordination committee for a young graduate of Grace Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids. which is a Orthodox brethren seminary. And it was, I think, a Baptist church. And the women had all the meals, preparing downstairs in the kitchen, getting ready for the great celebratory dinner afterward. But on the floor of the ordination exams, a problem was emerging. This young seminary graduate said, well, of course Jesus had a human body. But he didn't have a human soul. That was the Logos. And my grandfather said, he believes in Apollinarianism. And truth be told, there appears to be a faculty member at Grace who had been later on dismissed. But at the time, he was espousing this age-old heresy. And young seminary graduates were picking up on it. And I don't remember what happened. I think there was a lot of pressure. This was considered a formality, and the meal was almost ready. Maybe we just need to ordain this guy and get going. But my grandfather protested that vehemently. So it's still a live issue today. So that was the background. But in the midst of that background, that controversy of how does Christ's human nature relate to his divine nature, a new heresy emerged. It's the heresy of Nestorianism. And this takes us to the first controversy, the controversy of the schizophrenic Christ. A little bit of background on this particular heresy. There's a number of prominent cities in the early church, Rome, Constantinople. You have Laodicea, Antioch, Alexandria. And two big rivals were Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria. There was a political rivalry for supremacy. And beyond that, there were some differences. Alexandria prized, as we saw with Origen and Clement, a more allegorical approach to interpretation, a view of salvation in which salvation is really divinization. It's being partakers of the divine nature. And with that, they put a high precedent on the full divinity of Christ and the unity of his person. On the other hand, rival city, Antioch in Syria, there's a greater emphasis on a more literal approach to hermeneutics, to interpretation, that these were real events that really happened in history, the literalness of it, and with that came an emphasis on Christ's real humanity and the duality of the natures. This is kind of heading for a train wreck of sorts, because eventually what happens is there's a particular man named Nestorius, the Bishop of Constantinople, another rival city, who is trained in Antioch. And he begins to stress the full humanity of Christ and the duality of the persons, but to such a degree that people start to question what he's teaching. And a lot of it came down to a particular word. that Nestorius did not like, a word that was being used in Alexandria. It was the word Theotokos. In Alexandria, both in terms of theology but in terms of piety, they loved to ascribe to Mary the title of Theotokos. Anyone know what that means? Mother of God or God-bearer. which was an honor to Mary, but also an honor to Christ, that he is fully God. Well, Nestorius didn't like this. He said it's not proper to God to be born. God has no beginning. And so it would be better to either combine that term with anthropotatikos, which is hard to say, or even better yet, throw out all those terms and just call him Christatikos, or call Mary Christatikos. She's the bearer or the mother of Christ. And so in this, he wants to really stress a sharp distinction between the humanity and the deity. And along with that, he took issue with the word of union. In Alexandria, they often spoke of a real union at the level of the person between the divine and the human natures. And Nestorius quibbled on that and said, maybe we could call it a conjunction. a conjoining of the two natures, but let's keep them pretty distinct, almost to the point of separating them. Now for a lot of people, what Nestorius was saying sounded like schizophrenia. where there's not just two natures in Christ. There's actually two persons in Christ. And it's a little unclear. There's some differences in language. Nestorius would say, yes, he's one person, but he's two subsistences. He has two natures, but there's two apostases. And so in this kind of linguistic battle of words, What people are hearing is not just two natures, but two persons. That almost Christ has a split or dual personality. Now what do you all think would be the implications of this view, if indeed New Story has taught this, that there are two persons in Christ? That we have to separate the natures? What would be the implications for sacramental theology? This might seem far afield, but what would be the implications? And I'll give you a hint. Sign the thing signified. If you separate Christ's human nature from his divine to the point where there's two persons, how would that play out in sacramental theology? Any ideas? Well, I'll give you a few more hints. One way to think of it this way is if In the same way that you separate the two natures, if you separate the sign from the thing signified, where it doesn't really matter whether you have the one, What you can end up with is what you basically see in Quakerism, Anabaptist views, and broad evangelicals, where it doesn't really matter whether you belong to the formal church. It doesn't really matter whether you get baptized. All that really matters is purely spiritual matters. And so they separate the sign from the thing signified, rather than affirming a sacramental union. So that's just one instance which this can play out farther down the stream in your theology. Well, this all led to a council, a council of Ephesus in 431. And just remember, as you think about these councils, this is Ephesus, the same city that Paul wrote his letter to. This is a biblical city with a lot of biblical precedent in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. Well, at this council, a couple things happened. One, they condemned Pelagianism, which Lord willing, Dr. McGraw will talk about next week, that view of sin and salvation that was horribly wrong. But they also condemned Nestorianism. They said, no, Christ is one person, not two persons. And with this, they condemned Nestorius as a heretic. They came to the right theological formulation, but just to be honest with you, the politics and the rhetoric and the way it was handled were, quite frankly, awful. Just to give you a little bit of an idea of what happened, Cyril of Alexandria, one of Nestorius' sharpest critics, he came to this council, and the Nestorian party, led by John of Antioch, were late, which you can understand because you're traveling all the way across the empire to different locations, and they got held up. And Cyril said, well, let's not wait for them. Let's get this party started now. Let's get the council started right now. We'll start the council without the other side and condemn them as heretics. That will make it even easier. So they did. They started the council. They condemned the stories as a heretic and said he's totally washed up. At this point, John of Antioch arrives with his party and he's flabbergasted. They started without us. We didn't even have a chance to present the view of Nestorius. And so they're pretty ticked off. And they say, we're going to have our own council. So they set up a rival council down the street. And they say, well, you know, actually, Cyril of Alexandria is a heretic. And they condemn them. So reprisal. Of course, Cyril thinks this is crazy. So he gets his council back together. And they, once again, condemn Nestorius. But this time, they condemn John of Antioch as well and all of his followers. Well, after this circus gets started, finally the emperor says, this is out of control. These churchmen need to get a grip. So Theodosius II says, all right, I'm going to arrest Cyril, I'm going to arrest John of Antioch, put them under lock and key, and I'm going to avoid both of their councils. They're both wrong. Well, after a couple years of negotiations, in the year 433, they finally get down to the table and come up with a formula of union that both sides can basically agree on. The one big caveat, though, is that Nestorius is still condemned. And this bishop of Constantinople is sent into exile, first to a monastery in Antioch and later to Petra in Jordan, where there's that great temple carved into the rock face, which is often featured in movies even today. Well, he ends up in the desert and that's where he lives out his days. Big question, though. Obviously, this was the right decision. Christ is one person. He's not a schizophrenic Christ. but was Nestorius a Nestorian? And that's something that theologians and historians have puzzled over. On the one hand, there's a lot of politics involved between Alexandria and Constantinople and Antioch, and there's some ways in which this man gets caught up in that controversy. On the other hand, there's a quibbling over terminology. subsistence, person, usia, substance, prosopon, persona, apostasis, and people are using sometimes the same term in different ways, or different terms in the same way. And I think what we could say is this, Nestorius probably was unclear. That's fair. He didn't express himself in the best of ways. But it's interesting that in the desert, he was given a copy of Leo's Tome, which later became the bedrock document for Chalcedonian orthodoxy. And when Nestorius read this document, he celebrated it and said, this is what I believe. And so my personal tendency is to want to say, yes, he was unclear, but given the exigencies of the time, I would want to be as charitable to him as possible and hope the best for Nestorius. Same time, is this relevant today? At Greenville, there are a lot of churches. Are there any churches you might think, you think Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians? If you look out in the world today, are there Nestorian churches? Anybody know? Are there Nestorian churches? Yeah, you're right. Discovered, you're right. There are Nestorian churches today. They're called the Church of the East. In the Far East, in Persia, there was a break-off splintering of people who defended Nestorius. It was tied up a little bit with politics. And to this day, there are groups of believers that can trace their lineage back to the Nestorian schism. And it's interesting, just historically, this group was very missionary-minded. They sent missionaries to Arabia, to India, and this is fascinating. In the 7th century, there were Nestorian churches sending missionaries to China. which has been in the news a lot today. And although that movement was stamped out, you can find historical documents with Chinese symbols and pictographs that basically reflect the influence of Nestorian missionaries in China only in the 7th century. So just fascinating how this continues to spread and to live on. Whether or not those churches are heretical is a question that's difficult to determine. On the one hand, they're probably unclear in their Christology, but where exactly they fall, I'm not really sure. But they do trace themselves back to this day. We're going to get into that. Well, and that, I think, would play into Lutheran versus Reformed polemics. Because they would say, we can maybe get into this later. Let's save that question. We'll come back to it. Are Reformed people Nestorian? It's a great question. We'll get back to that if we have time. Yes? We're going to get to the absorption to deity. Actually, with the second one. We've talked about the schizophrenic Christ, Nestorianism. which is splitting Christ, his two natures, separating him to the point where he becomes two people almost. But the second big controversy is what we could call the muddled Christ. The muddled Christ. And this is the heresy of Eutychianism. Now, Eutychius was probably not the most brilliant of theologians. He was a monk. a monk who was living in Constantinople. And what he did is he took Cyril of Alexandria's teaching too far. He so emphasized the unity of Christ's person. that he had the effect of muddling and confusing the two natures. And what Eutychius taught, and this is, I think, what Pastor Ellis is getting to, Eutychius taught that at the incarnation, you have two natures, human and divine. But in that union, in that incarnation, the natures meld, they blend, they confuse, they congeal to the point where Not only are they a third something or other, but it's really just one nature. Christ not only has one person, but he has one nature. And in that one nature, because they're confused together, the humanity essentially becomes absorbed into the divine. The humanity becomes divinized. And the result is, one, there's only one nature, it's all confused and muddled, but really, there is a question of, is he really human anymore? Has the human just become absorbed into the divine nature? Eutychius went so far as to say this, Christ is of one substance with the Father, but he's not of one substance with us. It's this muddled, this divinized humanity, where really the deity absorbs it. Now, I'd asked about the implications of Nestorianism for sacramental theology, where you would basically split apart the sign and the thing signified. What about the implications of Eutychianism for sacramental theology, where the two natures are confused and collapsed? What do you all think? What would happen there? Yes. Ryan. You lose the creator-creature distinction. When it comes to sacramental theology, along those lines, what ends up happening in some theologies is the sign and the thing signified. So baptism, for instance, and that which baptism represents, which is union with Christ and all his benefits, those essentially become collapsed and confused. And so as Protestant Christians, we look at Roman Catholicism, or even Eastern Orthodoxy, and when we look at their view of baptismal efficacy, What we see is really a confusion, a collapsing of the sign with the thing signified, where to be baptized is automatically ex opere operata, to be justified, to have an immediate infusion of grace, of necessity. And it's interesting, and this actually plays in a little bit to what Mr. Loring brought up, a number of federal vision advocates, if you're familiar with that controversy, such as James Jordan and Peter Lightheart, they will often accuse people in more traditional reform circles of being sacramental Nestorians, of dividing and separating the sign from the thing signified, like Baptists of a certain ilk would do, especially in the Anabaptist tradition. And it's interesting, though, that they could fall prey to the opposite error. Do these men collapse the sign and the thing signified? In which case, they almost become sacramental Eutychians rather than sacramental Nestorians. And so just something to think about. How does your view of the distinction of natures in the one person play out in sacramental theology, either separating these things or collapsing them? Well, this leads to another counsel. And if you look at your handout, I put the word counsel in scare quotes. And I did that because it's not considered to be an ecumenical or a council recognized by the entire church. It's the Council of Ephesus a second time, this time in the year 449, once again called by Theodosius II. At this council, it's really, the first Council of Ephesus I showed you was kind of a circus. Well, this one is even perhaps more of a circus. What ends up happening is Dioscorus, who's the bishop of Alexandria, he pays gold to the emperor. Gets a lot of imperial leverage. And basically what happens at this council is the Alexandrians, who've embraced Eutychianism, this radical oneness of Christ's nature, what we call a monophysite heresy. He's only got one nature. They just run roughshod over everybody else, and they say, not only does Christ only have one person, he's only got one nature. They reject the language of two natures in Christ. And they really swing that pendulum even further this way and say, no, radical unity. At this point, something remarkable providentially happens. So Theodosius II backing this council. Leo of Rome tried to have his letter read there and it was dismissed. He calls it a robber's synod. But the emperor is backing it. What really becomes a heretical decision. At this point, the emperor is riding on a horse. And he falls off his horse and he breaks his neck. And with that, his sister, Pulcheria, succeeds him as the empress. And Pulcheria, in God's providence, has a more balanced view and has some political reasons for calling another council. And that takes us to the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which really is the high watermark of establishing a Christological orthodoxy. in the western and eastern churches. At this council, there's over 500 bishops who show up, most of whom are from the east, though four come from the west. And really the West at this point isn't as concerned about this controversy. They still had Tertullian's formula of one person and two natures. They're facing barbarians. But the Eastern churches are being really rattled by this controversy. And so most of them come from the East. But interestingly, the document that comes to the fore is Leo's Tome. Leo is the Bishop of Rome, and for Roman Catholics, this becomes an important power play, in the sense that because Leo was so prominent at this council, and because his very well-written document, his tome, gains acceptance, this really helps catapult Rome into a position of greater primacy. And if you're looking at the development of Roman Catholic hierarchical power, this council is important for that reason. His tome essentially affirms what Tertullian had already affirmed, that Christ's one person, but also two distinct natures. And those two natures are united in one person. This council condemned, on the one hand, Eutychianism, which said one nature. It said, no, there's two natures. It also condemned Nestorianism, because it said, no, there's just one person, not two persons. What it really does is it avoids the extremes on either side and goes the via media, the third way, which is biblical orthodoxy. At this point, Chalcedon produces a document. And this document has been very influential in the history of the church. It's often called the Chalcedonian Creed. Perhaps a more precise wording would be called the Chalcedonian definition. It's a document that defines in the sense of clarifying what the church has always believed and confessed about the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to read part of it to you, but on your handout I've given a few key words that you'll see kind of pop out of the page as I read. The document goes like this. We then, following the Holy Fathers, all with one consent, Teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body. And what heresy does that contradict, of a reasonable soul? and body. Apollinarianism, so that's eliminated. The document goes on. Consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead. Homoousios, with the Father. What heresy does that condemn? Arianism, modern day Jehovah's Witnesses, or Russellites. And consubstantial with us according to the manhood of the same substance with us. This condemns Eutychianism. It goes on, in all things likened to us, without sin, begotten before all ages of the Father, according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood, the God-bearer. And this, of course, contradicts Nestorianism, which objected to the term Theotokos. One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusably, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably. And we're going to come back to that language. But two natures, inconfusably, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably. Four key words. The distinction of nature is by no means being taken away from the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one in the same son and only begotten. And it goes on. But that's kind of the kernel, the nutshell of this document. And I've laid out before you in your handout a few key terms. On the one hand, they affirmed one person, contra-historianism. And at the same time, two natures. There's two key adjectives that we can use to avoid heresy. These natures, on the one hand, are distinct. They're distinct, and we see that with the language from Chalcedon of without confusion, without change. They're distinct, and what heresy would this combat? Without confusion, without change, they're distinct natures. This would be the heresy of Eutychianism, the muddled Christ, the melding of these two things. But they're not only distinct, they're also inseparable. They're inseparable. Note the words, without division, without separation. And this would condemn the opposing problem, which would be what? Nestorianism. So Eutychianism and Nestorianism are both destroyed and annihilated with these four negative words, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, so that we have really a hypostatic union. And all that means, hypostatic refers to the person. It means that Christ's two natures are united in one person. He is one person in two distinct natures. And what I love about this document is that it doesn't attempt to tell you how this is true. It doesn't lay the incarnation like a patient etherized upon a table, use T.S. Eliot's language, in order to be analyzed and probed and poked by us. No, it preserves the mystery. It simply confesses that this is true. And with those four negative words, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, it really gives us the negative parameters in which we can do orthodox theology concerning the person of Christ. I think it was Burkauer who says, this provides a double row of beacon lights that mark off the channel. There's barrier reefs out there, there's dangerous waters, there's eutychianism on the one side, there's an historianism on the other, but this double row of beacon lights will lead you safely home if by God's grace you follow this path. I think also of Hermann Bavink that mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics. Or as Calvin said, we go thus far, but no farther. We believe that it's true without comprehending how it's true. This is the way we should do theology. Well, we've covered a lot of ground, but there's still more to go, just a little bit more, so hang on tight. There's aftermath, there's fallout to this great council at Chalcedon. And on the one hand, the West readily accepts this. They already agree with Leo's tome, they already like Tertullian's formula, and they're pretty much on board. In the Far East, you have the Persian break-off, the splinter group of Nestorians. In the Near East, there continues to be struggles. Some of it's political, some of it's theological, but a lot of the Eastern churches are not happy with Chalcedon. I'm not going to go into details, but there's seven ecumenical councils, and we've only talked about four of them. and will only hit on the other ones. But in 553, there's a second council of Constantinople, which is terribly confusing. I've watched a little bit of the documentary Monarchy, which goes through the different royal heads of England. And by Henry VIII, you're so confused about which Henry you're talking about that you have to have a diagram pulled up. And the same thing is true with the councils. Second Ephesus that's not really a council. There's Second Constantinople. But Second Constantinople really just affirms Chalcedon, among other things. That's the big takeaway. It reaffirms what was said there. There's a third council of Constantinople, to add to the confusion, in 680 to 681. And this affirms Chalcedon, but it also deals with another issue that's creeping up. I already talked about Eutychianism, which is really the monophysite heresy, mono, one, physite, nature, only one nature in Christ. But I'm going to ask you guys, what do you think about this? Does Christ have one will, or does he have two wills? What do you think? And I won't condemn you as a heretic, no matter how you answer. I'll be really charitable. It's a trick question in some ways. But it's actually important. It has implications. What do you think? One will or two in Christ? Well, I don't want to embarrass anyone. No one seems really ready to jump out. Oh, Dr. McGraw. Two divine and human. And you think of that passage. Garden of Gethsemane, Christ says, not my will, but thine be done. And in that, we know that Christ is fully divine. He has a divine will. He's consubstantial with the Father. But at the same time, he can say, not my will, but thine be done. Thus, we affirm the full deity, he's got a divine will, and the full humanity of Christ. He has a human will. And the same thing with, think of it this way. Along with Apollinarianism, what he did not assume He did not heal. If Christ did not assume and have a human nature, which would involve having a human will, then our wills are still in bondage to Satan and to sin. We are not truly free. Yes? When he says, not my will, but thine, he's not saying, I have a different will from yours. No, he's not. He's not saying that they're at odds or contradictory wills. and say they're too, insist on there being two wills. I agree with that. they're not going to be different. They're not at odds. And Christ submits himself to the Father in the garden. Yes, but he submits, and I would live to say, well, my will is really this way, but I'm just submitting to your will. No, he still has his sanctity. Right. He has that gesture, let the cup, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me. But he submits himself to the will of the Father in his incarnation. It's a good point. And some people struggled on this for that very reason. So Pope Honorius, the Bishop of Rome, one of the reasons he struggles with this is, are we saying there are contradictory or conflicting wills in Christ? And that's part of his problem. So this, I don't want to get too hung up on this issue, but with this, it leads to, I mentioned the Constantinople III, 680-681, and this council, the council rules that there are two wills in Christ, thus affirming his full humanity and full deity. And this is just an interesting footnote of history. At this council, Pope Honorius, who is the Bishop of Rome and is in the succession of bishops according to Roman Catholics from Saint Peter to today, Pope Francis, he was condemned as a heretic because he defended the one will view of Christ. And it's interesting that that heresy label is never lifted. So within the Roman supposedly infallible papacy, there's a pope who was condemned as a heretic in the year 681. And Catholics say, well, he wasn't speaking ex cathedra. But at the end of the day, it's a pretty weak link in the chain to have a heretic as one of the bishops of Rome. But we'll let that pass. Eventually, there's another controversy. We don't have time to talk about this, but there's a controversy over images and icons. I remember when I was at Bob Jones, they had a Russian iconography exhibit and it was just chock full of graven imagery. I was tempted to go in and destroy it all, but I I tried not to. I didn't do it. I used restraint. I didn't get arrested. It would have been a good cause, but you know, iconoclasm has its costs. So this debate develops. You might think, what does this have to do with the person of Christ? But if you think about it, one of the big nubs of the debate is, can we create images of Jesus if Jesus was a real man? Obviously, we can't create images of God. John of Damascus said that. We shouldn't try to create images of the invisible God. But could we create images of the image of the invisible God, the God-man? And so this becomes a debate. But not anymore. He's not here. So anything we create is bound to be incorrect. Right. Right, well I'm not, yeah, I'm definitely on board with Westminster Iconoclasm. But that was the debate. The debate was how does this relate to images and then do we worship the images, do we honor the images? Yes. It's important to realize And they would say that when we refuse to have images, and when we destroy images, there's a sense in which they would say we are theological Nestorians. Or yeah, we're theological Nestorians because we are saying that we can't. That's the wrong way to say it. We back up. We back up. That's what we've been thinking. That's when we become Eutychians. Because they would accuse us of that. And I was thinking that with sacraments. But you're right. They're saying, so just let's strike that, reverse it. And back up a few places. With the Lutheran, say, defensive images, they're saying, well, we're depicting him according to his humanity. And so it's OK. And if you're not willing to do that, then you're falling prey to a bad Christology. Right. Because there was a council in 754 that defended iconoclasm. And then 787, the final ecumenical council at Nicaea. The first one defended the Trinity. The second council of Nicaea in the 8th century actually defended images and iconography. So yeah, I'm not going to get into that debate. But all I would say is this, on that point, as Reformed Christians, When we analyze the use of images, what I would say is, if you say, we are going to only depict Christ according to his humanity. So it's just an image of his human nature. My question would be, then, are you really separating the natures and acting like we can treat Christ according to his humanity and make an image of it? And at the same time, not reckon that we're making an image of the person of Christ. And the one person of Christ is both God and man. In a Reformed view, that would be ultimately an image of the God-man. That would be an image of the one person of Christ. And to say that you can somehow separate the humanity from the deity would be questionable. A simple answer. I don't know. The Bible never does. Amen. I know it's helpful. Well, I've left you thoroughly confused. I will say this, that at the end of the day, We focus on the Council of Ephesus, which condemned Eutychianism, condemned historianism. And we focus on the Council of Chalcedon, which gives us really a high watermark of Christology. We can, I think, appreciate what Gerald Brace said, that the Chalcedonian definition 451, remains to this day the supreme expression of an orthodox biblical faith concerning the person of Christ. Although other councils got hung up on things like images, we can still go back to these early documents and derive great importance from them. Dr. McGraw, you had a question, I think, or a comment. That's very helpful. You have a divine person, the law god, the son of God, who assumes a human nature. I think that's very helpful. Moving quickly, and I want to have some time. Let's just go ahead. Any questions at this point before we move in briefly to the third and final section? Any questions? Yes. I'm glad you emphasized mystery. I was going to ask you that question you answered before. But from the standpoint of how should we look at that? Right. Is he performing miracles? Nevertheless, how do we look at that? Well, I think Westminster Confession is helpful on that point. And I'm actually going to move on to the third section, because hopefully I'll answer that in the course of going through the confession. But that's a great question. It's devotional, because you're reading the Bible. How do you think about these things? Well, finally, the legacy. We talked about the schizophrenic Christ, the muddled Christ. Well, finally, what's the legacy of the whole Christ? the Christological definition of Chalcedon. And on the one hand, this is still a relevant issue today. I mentioned Nestorian churches. Well, there are also monophysite or Eutychian churches that exist today. When you read in the news about Christians being persecuted in Egypt, for instance, or in Syria, often these are churches that descend from the monophysite Eutychian controversy. So Egypt, Syria, Armenia, Ethiopia, India, there is still a large number of churches to this day, including, I think, one in Greenville, that affirm that Christ is one person and one nature. Now again, I said there's a lot of politics, there's terminology issues, where exactly they stand I don't always know, but just realize that there are people even in this town that would in some sense have a lineage that goes back to these early councils. Beyond that, so we have that relevance for today, Nestorian and Monophysite churches that continue up until the present. But let's look briefly at the relation of these documents to the Westminster standards. And all I really want to get across is the idea that when the Westminster divines articulated their view of Christ, his person, and his work, and his natures, and his being a mediator, they didn't do it in a vacuum. They didn't reinvent the wheel. They learned from and were in conversation with all that had come before, both in the early church and in the Middle Ages and in the era of the Reformation. I'm just going to draw out a few things. In the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 21, that great kind of classic one about who is the Redeemer of God's elect, the only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, to be in the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was and continueth to be God and man, in two distinct natures and one person forever. That formula, going all the way back to Tertullian, through Leo, to Chalcedon. On the chapter of Christ the Mediator, it talks about how Christ was born in the womb of the Virgin Mary of her substance. Again, echoing Chalcedon. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person. And then note this language. Without conversion, composition or confusion. Westminster divines are really just channeling the language of Chalcedon. Then in 8.7, of the Westminster Confession, Christ in the work of mediation acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself, yet by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature. In other words, this gets to Mr. Van Boris' question, there's one person, one person who acts according to both natures. So for instance, Jesus Christ, according to his deity, cannot die. God cannot die. But Jesus Christ, according to his humanity, can die and did die on the cross. He's capable of suffering. And you think of that passage in Acts 20, where it talks about God purchased the church by his blood. Well, God doesn't have blood. But the Son of God, who is God, according to his humanity, did purchase the church by his blood. So keep in mind that you have one person acting according to both natures. And sometimes in the Bible, it'll say something like this, that he suffers, the son of God who suffers, but he suffers according to his humanity. So keep in mind, that's how we should think about these things. With the miracles, I think it's a little more difficult because at Jesus' baptism, he is filled with the spirit above measure. And there's a sense in which all of Christ's ministry is carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit and in dependence upon the Holy Spirit. So when Christ is casting out demons, when he's walking on water, when he's doing miraculous sign gifts, To say that that's only according to his deity, my fear would be that that would diminish the role of the Holy Spirit in empowering him, according to his humanity, to do mighty works. That's a harder one, because obviously... That's the explanation I've received. It doesn't feel fully satisfying. Okay. Just to say it's simply Spirit-empowering. Right. But again, he's one person. He's the God-man. I have a problem with the basic formulas of the Church. It's just the way it's applied. That's a great question and it's one that I think it could do a lot more thinking and researching and meditating on. That's a good one. Before we go, I'm not going to have time to get into all the areas. We already touched on the sacraments and a number of things. In the larger catechism, this is just useful, if you have a chance, the larger catechism has some very helpful questions like this. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be God? Why was it requisite that the mediator should be man? And in these catechism questions and answers, they show not just that he's fully God and fully man, but why it was necessary for his work. That as God, according to his deity, Jesus Christ was able to sustain the, let's see, he was requisite of mediatorship of God that he might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God and the power of death, give worth and efficacy to his sufferings. obedience, and intercession, and to satisfy God's justice. And it goes on. And really, we can think of it this way, that when the Westminster Divines pick up this topic, they're saying that you had to be God in order to be a sufficient Savior. On the other hand, it says, why was it requisite that he should be man? And it lists a whole other set of reasons. And we could summarize them this way, that he had to be man in order to be a suitable savior, to use Dr. Piper's language, that to be sufficient savior in his work of redemption, he was God. In order to be a suitable savior who could actually die for us and whose works could be attributed to us, reckoned to us, it was necessary for him to be man. And both of these natures in one person. So the last thing I'll say, we've talked about a lot of things. We don't have time to get into all the practical applications. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, through these councils, the church learned never to separate. Christ's two natures from his one person. That he is the whole Christ in himself and for us. And my exhortation out of this to you is it's so easy to want to separate Christ's natures from his person, to separate his benefits from his person, to just focus on his cross or the empty tomb. And all of those things are true. Justification is true. The empty tomb is true. But in all these things, never separate them in your preaching, if you preach, or in your piety, as every Christian has, from Christ's person. Keep a focus and remember that ultimately, we're talking about the person of Jesus. Let's cultivate a love for Jesus, the divine human person. as He is in Himself, but also for us. Let's pray. Father, we stand in awe before the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God who took on flesh for us and for our salvation. Lord, as we study the intricacies of these doctrines and how they play out in the sacraments and in images and even in hymnody and the language that we use, Lord, we pray we would never lose, but rather cultivate a deeper love for the person of your son. May we have a Jesus-shaped piety, that even as we confess you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that we would remember that there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.