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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.
#46 Christological Controversies Part 3
Series Church History
| Sermon ID | 9262402273872 |
| Duration | 34:47 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Language | English |
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