All right. It was two weeks ago that we began looking at some Christological controversies that arose late in the fourth century. This is the third part of that series. I believe this will be the last part. I'm not sure if we'll get through all of it. But if we don't, we'll just kind of catch the little tag of it next week, and then we'll move on to a new subject. The first of these theological controversies that we addressed was Apollinarianism. We call it the Apollinarian heresy. It was named for its most influential voice, and that was Apollinarius. Apollinarianism is a Christological heresy. It was proposed by Apollinarius of Laodicea. And it argues that Jesus had a human body and a human soul, but a divine mind and not a human rational mind. The mind of the divine logos, the mind of the divine word of God, took the place of the human mind of the man Jesus. And so what you had was a composite. It was a sort of a composition. It was a composite nature formed from two. So you had a human nature. And it was partly the human nature. And then the divine nature kind of took over the human mind of Christ. So you didn't have the whole human. You had the divine Christ, and you had this composite thing that took place. That was Apollinarianism. We then turned our attention to a different Christological controversy, but was still related to the incarnation, still related to Christ's humanity and his divinity, that being the heresy of Nestorianism. We noted last week that there is some evidence that Nestorius, who lived from 386 to 451, may have been misunderstood. because of some of the terminology he used and terminology he did not want to use. And that he may not have actually held to the heresy that bears his name. Again, I leave that to our own personal study, to your conviction as to whether or not someone has quipped Nestorius was actually a Nestorian. So I'll leave that to you to study that out. However, whether that's the case or not, There truly existed a heresy that came to be known as Nestorianism. That heresy centers on how we articulate the unity of the divinity of Christ and the humanity of Christ in the incarnation. Nestorian Christology promotes the concept of what theologians call the prosopic union of two persons. That's the divine and the human in Jesus Christ. And my handy little whiteboard here, you see I have the prosopic union mentioned here, prosopic, coming from the Greek word prosopon, which is usually translated as face. We see it in the New Testament face-to-face, that's prosopon. On occasion it's translated as person, the person. And so we see that in Romans 5-7, I think we cited this last week, for one will scarcely die for a righteous person, prosopon, Though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. And so we understand that as referencing an entire, a person to die for that person. So according to Nestorius, all right, well, let me put it this way. According to Nestorians, right, Jesus is two distinct persons in one incarnate Christ. He, remember we talked about the fact that he did not like this term Theotokos, referring to Mary as the God-bearer, all right? And we talked about how that, sadly enough, that could be translated not just bearer of God, but mother, because those are the only people that give birth are mothers, so it could be the mother of God. And then we talked about the transgressions of those who ended up with Mariolatry and worshiping Mary and lifting her up to a high prominence just as Jesus. So there are some who still don't really care for that term, the mother of God, or the God-bearer. But that term is in that Chalcedon, the council in the Creed of Chalcedon, the definition. So it is there, and it was used. And I think that if we understand the term, it's a good technical term. He preferred this term, Christotakos, because he didn't believe that she gave birth to God, but she gave birth to the Christ. So he didn't believe that it was God in her womb, but Christ. And that somehow, some way, that the divine spirit there was together with the Christ, but not born of Mary. I may have muddled all of that, but that's basically Nestorian theology, that there are two natures in Christ. I mean, not two natures, two persons, not two natures, that's what we believe, but two persons in the one person of Christ. All right, so that's Nestorian heresy. and it bears the name of Nestorius. Well, down in Alexandria, Nestorius had sparked the ire of a bishop there by the name of Cyril, Cyril of Alexandria. Cyril of Alexandria did not like anything that came out of Constantinople, and that's Nestorius. Hear it or not. And so there's word out there among the historians that Cyril sort of maligned Nestorius. Some people, one scholar referred to Cyril as a bit of a crank. He was a bit of a crank. And it's true. And you read some of the histories of Cyril and you'll find out that, yes, he was a good scholar, good theologian, good Christian leader, bishop, but he did have a bad temper. He came across as disgruntled all the time. So there may have been something in Cyril that turned him against Nestorius. Again, be that as it may, there is still the real heresy out there. So the story is that Cyril despised, again, any bishop from Constantinople. All right, so when Cyril heard the teachings of Nestorius, he took it personally, and then he wrote a volume entitled Five Books Refuting the Blasphemies of Nestorius. I think I shared that last week. Nestorianism eventually was condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431. And Nestorius was removed from his position as Bishop of Constantinople and was banished. It was again condemned We'll get back to this. It was again condemned at the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451, which we're going to touch on later on when we actually give the definition of Chalcedon. What followed after the Council of Ephesus? 431, Council of Ephesus. What followed after that? Well, an individual by the name of John of Antioch. John of Antioch was Bishop of Antioch from 429 to 441. So for 12 years there, he was Bishop in Antioch. He was angered by what had happened to Nestorius at the hands of Cyril of Alexandria. I guess siding with Nestorius, saying he's not a heretic, but you've maligned him in this fashion. A lot of the bishops followed John in Antioch, so a lot of those bishops in Syria, in Antioch of Syria, followed John in their defense of Nestorius, against Cyril of Alexandria. I think I said something last week about not confusing the two Antiochs, and I may have said them backwards. I don't like to go back and listen to these old things, but I think I said that. But we're talking about the Antioch of Syria here, okay? This is the Antioch in Syria, the east end of the Mediterranean, and not the Antioch in Pisidia where John or Paul ended up preaching there, okay? So just remember those two. So this is John of Antioch in Syria, and a lot of those Syrian bishops were also angered. So you ended up with this great deal of disunity among the Eastern churches. And now they're squabbling, they're fighting. Just imagine, you're the emperor, the Christian emperor. You're Theodosius II, emperor after this nation has become Christianized. And you've got all this squabbling among the church. which is supposed to be unified, this is the one body of Christ, and yet you've got all this fighting, all this squabbling, going back and forth between these churches, and then you've got people taking sides, and it gets bloody. So he again, as other emperors had done in the past, has to put down this disunity somehow, this squabbling. So in 433, just a couple of years after Ephesus, Theodosius II, trying to regain peace between the Antiochians and the Alexandrians, he drew up a document called the Formula of Union. So he's trying to get these two sides to sign this thing. And he's trying to word it so that Cyril will sign it. And he's trying to word it so that the Antiochians will sign it, so that you can get these other individuals to sign it. And he finally gets them, he forces them to sign this thing. So this had this doctrine, this document, this formula of union, forcing John of Antioch and Cyril of Alexandria to sign this thing. Well, as you might imagine, it wasn't long. The conflict resumed shortly after their deaths. Both of them died not within just a few years after that they signed this thing. I think the last one was like three years later. They had both died. So fighting again begins, and there arises a new heresy that is, again, centered on the person of Christ. That's why we're calling these Christological controversies. By a person by the name of Eutyches. I guess you want that name. Eutyches, he lived from 380 to 456, so he died just shortly after Chalcedon. Eutyches was what they call an Archimandrite. An Archimandrite simply means that he was appointed to oversee a number of, either a number of monasteries or one large monastery with several smaller abbeys associated with it. And the word is that he was a presbyter there in Constantinople. and was this Archimandrite over these monks. I think it was 300 plus monks, I believe, he oversaw. Well, the Christology of Eutyches was this. The human nature of Christ had been completely subsumed by the divine nature. It's different from Apollinarianism. Apollinarianism made a composite of the two. You had what we call composition, the human nature and the divine nature, and part of the human nature was converted into the divine nature so that Christ had a divine mind, not a human mind. So you had this composite thing, this composition. This is different. This is where you have two things, and now you just have one. You've got the divine and the human nature coming together, and the human nature is completely assumed by the divine nature, so it's like there's no human nature left in all. He's completely divine. He is one person, the divine Son of God. The illustration that was used was the illustration of a drop of vinegar into the ocean. So if you take just one drop of vinegar and put it in the ocean, what do you have now? Well, that vinegar just becomes absolutely subsumed by the ocean as if it's not even there anymore. So that's the illustration used to describe the Eutychian heresy of combining those two natures, of confusing those two natures, confuse, bringing, fusing the two together so you just have the one divine nature. Needham puts it this way in his, Church history, he says this, quote, according to Eudaiches, the incarnate son had only one nature. His deity had absorbed his humanity and transformed it into divinity. So you just have Jesus Christ, according to the Eudaichean heresy, is just one nature in Christ, all right? And it's divine. An individual by the name of Flavian, who was Bishop of Constantinople from 447 to 449, condemned Eutychius, Eutychius, Eutychius. But Eutychius had a strong advocate in the Bishop of Alexandria now. Remember, Cyril had died. The new Bishop of Alexandria is a man by the name of Dioscorus, You want all these names? We're going to forget them when we go home. Dioscorus is his name. Dioscorus was a bit of a rogue. He acted much like a mob boss. He was the bishop, but he was not very Christian in his demeanor, and he was not one who would, you know, you talk about the Bible saying that an elder has to be gentle, being able to lead and teach, right? Not Dioscorus. Dioscorus, Needham describes him this way. Needham says he is, quote, a gangster strutting around in a bishop's robe, unquote. So imagine the worst mobster that you can imagine and the attitudes that they have, the spirit that they have, the cold-bloodedness that they have, the selfishness that they have, that they will kill, murder anyone for their own gains. This is Dioscorus, but yet an elder, a bishop there in Alexandria. In 449, Theodosius II commissioned another council at Ephesus. But Dioscorus and his followers held sway over the event. So imagine that the, again, you've got, remember I told you earlier, when they signed this formula of unity, and then they died, it all rose up again. So now Theodosius has to do something else. So what does he do? He calls another council. And he calls another council in Ephesus in 449. But this time, he doesn't have decent people in charge or running it or speaking. He has Dioscorus and his thugs over that second council in Ephesus. And here's what happened. There are four things mainly that happened. Number one, they recommissioned Eutyches to his position over the monasteries. So he's brought back into power again in Constantinople as presbyter and as an Archimandrite. Number two. They proclaimed the formula of union from 433 as unlawful. And so that was null and void. That's done. No more formula of unity between the Antiochians and the Alexandrians. Number three, they deposed Flavian and the other bishops in Antioch. So Flavian there, a bishop in Antioch, these others, they're all deposed. They're brought down. And then lastly, they declined to even read a letter that we refer to him as Leo I. He's referred to by historians as Pope Leo I from Rome. He had sent a letter to the council urging them to condemn eudachese. They wouldn't even read it. They wouldn't even look at it. They didn't even acknowledge it at all. And then Leo I, he was known as Leo the Great. He was the Pope of Rome from 440 to 461. And I hope you understand, they called them popes. We have to understand that when we think of a pope today, they were popes as like the father, the leader, the head, a bishop, the papa, as it were. not as one who was supposed to speak for Christ on the earth. Although Leo the Great here, Leo I, is credited, I think, with sort of beginning the seeds of the papacy that we will see in the Western Church in Rome. But with his power and his influence in Rome, he could not thwart the victory of the Alexandrian theologians. I call them theologians, the Alexandrian thugs. Their heretical Christology related to our Lord's personhood, and it had won the day. They had a Christological heresy there at the Second Council of Ephesus. under Dioscorus from Alexandria. It was heretical and for the moment it had won the day. Leo ended up calling it a synod of robbers because they had robbed the church of the truth. Historians still refer to this council as the Robber Synod. So you could go to your favorite search engine and type in Robber Synod, and you'll end up with this entire story that I'm telling you tonight related to Dioscorus and his thugs and squashing true theology and accepting the heresy of Eutyches. Theodosius II eventually died in 450 And Marcion, the new emperor, was sympathetic to the Antioch theologians. So now, as happens in history, we see this all the time. We see the pendulum back and forth. Now they're in favor. Now they're not in favor. Now they're in favor. Now they're not in favor. Well, now Marcion is the new emperor. And he convened what we call now the Council of Chalcedon in 451. And then you had the task of writing a satisfactory creed that would biblically put forward the doctrine of the person of Christ as God and man. And that would be acceptable to all the bishops. Now that's a challenge. So you've got to put forward language that all these bishops can agree to. So after a long time, long time of controversial debates, confrontational debates, threats from Marcion, threats from Pope Leo I, a creed was finally developed. As you might imagine, it was rejected by Eutyches. It was rejected by Dioscorus. It was rejected by other Alexandrian theologians. And even a few of the Syrians, but the vast majority of the biblical theologians of the day, the elders, the presbyters, the bishops, accepted the creed there in Chalcedon. It's also called the Chalcedonian definition. That's another thing. You can go to your favorite search engine, type in Chalcedonian definition, and you'll end up with what I'm about to read to you. I have one English translation. There are a number of English translations. They're not all exactly the same, but they get across the right ideas. So let me read to you the Chalcedonian definition, which intended to define the two natures of Jesus, his full humanity, and his full deity. Quote, here it is. Therefore, following the holy fathers, previous bishops, previous teachers of the Bible, following the holy fathers, we all, with one accord, teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body. So there's your attack on Apollinarianism. Reasonable soul, meaning thinking, a mind. We talk about people being of two parts, soul and body. Well, that soul is your intellect, right? Your intellect, your volition, right? Or your emotions. Continuing with the definition. Speaking of Jesus Christ, He is of one substance with the Father. Same essence. He is of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood, like us in all respects apart from sin. As regards his Godhead, he is begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood, begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. We'll get to that terminology later when we look at our confession of faith. Continuing with the Chalcedon definition. The distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence. not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and the only begotten God, the Word, Lord Jesus Christ. So basically you have one person, two natures in that one person, a divine nature, a human nature in one person. Continuing, and this is the end. Even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us. So that's the Chalcedon definition. R.C. Sproul says this about that. He says this, Chalcedon established the boundaries beyond which we dare not tread in our speculations, lest we plunge ourselves into serious heresy. If we move away from Chalcedon in either direction, exaggerating either the divinity or the humanity at the expense of the other, we will fall into heresy. You follow that? You don't want to move away from those boundaries, pushing more of the divinity or pushing more of the humanity. Either time, you're going to fall off that razor's edge into heresy. At Chalcedon, The church was careful to define the limits of speculation regarding the mystery of this union of two natures using a method of definition that we call the way of negation. That is, it's difficult to say much about the union of a divine and a human nature in one person, but we can at least tell you what it is not. The four famous negatives of Chalcedon are these. The two natures of Christ are without mixture, without confusion, without division, and without separation. We read those, and I told you those are important. Because at Chalcedon, they did not so much as define and say what this union is. They're basically telling you what it's not. There's no confusion, they're together, they're in one person, Jesus Christ, one man, one God-man, totally God, totally man, 100% both, complete, full human nature, complete, full God of God nature, but one person. How do you define that? They don't. They just state it. But they do give you negations. They tell you what it's not. And by those negations, you know what they're doing. They're wielding their sword against these three Christological heresies that had just arisen, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, and Eudacheanism. And so they're saying it's without these things. So those are heresies. So whatever you believe about the Union, it can't be these things. Benjamin Keech. The writer of the Baptist Catechism, in question number four, asks this question, who is the Redeemer of God's elect? The answer is this. The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, that's begotten from before the ages, right? That's the eternal Son of God. became man, that's he was begotten as a man, and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures, the one person forever. And then if this were more of a theological class, we could go through the various verses and show forth these things. But we're basically just trying to cover history, and this is a really important part of it, of who Christ is. We have about five minutes, so let's take just a little bit of time. We'll take our hymnals. Would you turn to page 674, please? On page 674, you will find a portion of our Confession of Faith, the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. We're looking at chapter eight and paragraph two, referencing Christ, who is our Redeemer. and they follow, if you'll listen to this, if you can remember a little bit of the language of Chalcedon, you'll see that they follow some of this. Did I? What did I say? 674, did I say the wrong number? I apologize if I did. 674. Let's just read that second paragraph. The Son of God The second person in the Holy Trinity, being very and eternal God, the brightness of the Father's glory, of one substance, and equal with him who made the world, who upholdeth and governeth all things he hath made, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man's nature. with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin. So that means we get sleepy, he got sleepy. We get tired, he got tired. He grew weary, just like a human being, yet without sin. Being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit coming down upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowing her, and so was made of a woman of the tribe of Judah, of the seed of Abraham and David, according to the scriptures. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person, and look at the language, just right out of Chalcedon, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person, speaking of Jesus, is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man? And those three negations that you see there in our confession are intended to guard against those specific Christological heresies that arose in the early church. I'm gonna begin looking at these, and I only have a little bit left here, but we won't finish in time. So if you'll allow me, please, let me just get started, and then we'll wrap this up next week, all right? So these heresies that we talked about, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Euchenism, those heresies distorted the doctrine of Christ's two natures, and the confusion follows earlier Christian creeds in responding to them, right? That's what they would do. Each of these terms, without conversion, without composition, without confusion, each of those terms addresses a particular error in how Christ's divine and human natures relate to each other. We probably have time for just this first one. Number one, without conversion, without conversion. So I don't know if you still have your copy of the Confession open, but that's the first one, without conversion. This was against Eudaicheanism and an overlapping heresy known as monophytism. Monophytism just meaning one person. That phrase, without conversion, rejects the idea that Christ's human nature was converted into his divine nature. Or that his nature absorbed or replaced that his divine nature absorbed or replaced his human nature after the incarnation. So that was that heresy, that his human nature was like a drop of vinegar in the ocean and just completely absorbed by the ocean. That did not take place. Monophytism is Greek for one nature, taught that Christ had only one nature after the incarnation. effectively collapsing the human nature into the divine. The statement rejects the statement without conversion, that statement in our confession, that statement rejects this idea by affirming that Christ's divine and human natures remain distinct and unchanged. So one did not get absorbed by the other, mainly the divine, or the human by the divine, all right? All right, that exhausts our time for tonight. So next week, we'll wrap this up by talking about what our confession writers referred to when they said without composition and without confusion. All right, we'll talk about that. Let's pray together, please. Our Father and our God, we again come before you thankful for how you have watched over us this day and how you have aided us in our study tonight. And I pray that above all, we walk away from these studies not maybe remembering all these names and all these various heresies, but maybe remember the truth of our confession as it outlines for us what we believe to be the biblical truth of Jesus Christ being the God-man who gave up himself as the one who would atone for our sins and be a mediator for us. He is our high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Blessing our time of prayer to follow, we ask in Jesus' name.