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The history of Christology is discussed, focusing on the first seven centuries of the Church. The main ideas covered include Jesus being fully God and fully man, the denial of Jesus' humanity in early heresies, the denial of Jesus' divinity in Ebionism, the Nicene Council's affirmation of Jesus' eternal nature and same essence as God, the biblical passages used in the debates, and the major role of Athanasius in fighting Arianism. The Council of Nicaea was called to address Arianism and ensure unity in Christian doctrine. As we cover the history of Christology, we're going to follow a seven-part outline to show the events that happened in the first seven centuries of the Church. And the order is that Jesus is the man who is God, fully God, fully man, one person, two natures, two wills. And one thing that you can notice in the outline is that four of them all occur within two centuries, the fourth and the fifth century. And that is namely that Jesus is fully God, fully man, one person, and two natures. And these two centuries really are what shape almost the entirety of our Christology. You know, that last point, that he has two wills, is really just an outworking of the fact that he has two natures. And as you can see, the fact that he is fully God and fully man covers the first two points, that he is the man who is God. Nevertheless, it's helpful to see the progression of thought through the centuries. So we'll follow this outline in historical order, starting with Jesus the man. Let's start off with Jesus Christ is a man. The first heresy we're going to discuss denied that Jesus is a man. It was a super early heresy, starting even before the first century was over. John the Apostle wrote explicitly against docetism in his epistles. He said, every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. That's in his first epistle. And then, I say this because many deceivers who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh have gone out into the world. That's in his second epistle. And then, Ignatius, writing in about 100 AD, made arguments against docetism, saying that Jesus ate and was hungry and was sleepy and was from the line of David and all that sort of thing. But, you know, the heresy's name comes from apir. It's just the Greek word for apir, doceo. And so they just taught that Jesus appeared to do all those things. And then, Ignatius says this really cool zinger against the docetists. He says, Jesus suffered, not as certain unbelievers maintain, but he only seemed to suffer, as they themselves only seemed to be Christians. Boom, right? Anyways, this one was a tendency of Greek thought, which tended to look down on the flesh and instead value the incorporeal world of the mind and that sort of thing. But actually, you know, the flavor of docetism, which denied his humanity, is actually the most common flavor of heresies about the person of Jesus. It's much more common to deny his humanity than his deity in these heresies. It's like the zombie heresy, you know, you think you killed it, but it just keeps coming back. All right, so remember our creed, Jesus is the man who is God, fully God, fully man, one person, two natures, two worlds. So he is the man who is God. The second major heresy to hit the church denied that Jesus was God. This is called Ebionism. And it arose out of the Jewish population where Christianity had spread. The church, of course, had always taught that Jesus was God. And in the 160s, you can read some of the first Antoninusine fathers, Justin Martyr and Melito of Sardis, making pretty good arguments for Jesus's deity. So it must have been an issue, at least as early as that, but the first guy to really encounter this heresy in its Ebionite form and take it on full head was Irenaeus of Lyon, writing in around 185 AD. He's actually the first one who names it as Ebionism. In arguing against Ebionism, he says that Jesus had to be God if we are to be saved. If Jesus isn't God, then we cannot be saved. And this link, this connection to our salvation is actually going to be a major deal in Christology. This point will be picked up several times in the future in the writings of Athanasius on through to Anselm, and that is Ebionism, the denial that Jesus is God. So the First Ecumenical Council is a council of Nicaea. The two points articulated by the Nicene Fathers were that Jesus is eternal with God and Jesus is the same essence as God. When we say eternal with God, one of the issues was whether or not Jesus was created. The Arians said there once was when he was not, and they argued John 3, 16 says that Jesus was begotten, so that must mean he's not eternal. They translated Colossians 1, 15 to say that Jesus was the firstborn of all creation, and he was a part of the creation, so he's created, he must not be eternal. Then they also said, so their Greek version of Proverbs 8 said that wisdom was created. So if Jesus is the wisdom of God, and the Bible says that that was created, then Jesus must be created, and therefore must not be eternal with God. So you can see that they argued from Scripture, and we'll respond to this in a second, but you can see that they denied that Jesus is eternal with God. The Nicene Fathers also maintained that Jesus is the same essence as God. So Hebrews 1, 3 uses the word essence to Greek us hypothesis, or hypostasis, and it clearly says that he's the exact representation of the Father's essence. But the Arians said that he can't be of the same nature, since God is one, and God is uncreated, and therefore if Jesus is created, then he can't be God, he can't be of the same essence as God. So these are the two issues that the Nicene Fathers stood for, Jesus is eternal with God, and Jesus is the same essence as God. In countering this, the Nicene Fathers argued that the word begotten in John 3, 16 is something that occurs from all eternity. The language that they put in the creed was that Jesus is begotten, not made. In Colossians 1, 15, the Nicene Fathers argued that the word firstborn simply indicates Jesus as his supremacy and superiority, which is a natural usage of that word. Also, Athanasius said that if the verse says that Jesus is the firstborn over all creation, then the verse actually distinguishes him from creation, and it makes the opposite point of what the Arians were trying to claim. And then Athanasius also said that they misinterpreted Proverbs 8, where he said, Now I'm so glad you agree that Jesus is the wisdom of God. Now, are you saying that there once was a time when God was without his wisdom? Checkmate. Right? So, there are a lot more scriptural and theological debates on this issue, but that gives you a taste. Alright, so Jesus is the man who is God, fully God, fully man, one person, two natures, two wills. We're going to look at that point that he is fully God, okay? He is the same essence as God, so he's eternal with God and the same essence as God. That's what the Council of Nicaea dealt with, that he's fully God. The Council of Nicaea was so major that early church history names its divisions after. There are the anti-Nicaean fathers, which came before Nicaea, and then the ones that came after Nicaea, which are called the post-Nicaean fathers. The Christology after Nicaea is markedly more mature. The Council of Nicaea was called for by Emperor Constantine, who feared division within his kingdom of Christianity, if Christianity was not unified in its core doctrine. Nicaea hosted hundreds of church leaders and lasted for several months. The main issue at the Council of Nicaea was Arianism. The two main issues Arianism taught were, they said that Jesus could not be eternal with the Father if he was begotten, and famously it said that there once was when he was not. So, that's the first one. The second one was, they said that Jesus could not be the same essence as the Father. And some would say he was of a similar essence, but all of them agreed that he was not of the same essence. The main hero during the time of this was Athanasius of Alexandria. He was only 27 years old when Nicaea happened. And even though he was only in his 20s when the controversy erupted, fighting this heresy would be the war he devoted the entire rest of his life to. The five main biblical passages at play here were John 1.1, which says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Okay, so you have with-ness and was-ness, which is an interesting text. They use it a lot. It says, In the beginning, so the Son is eternal with the Father, and the Word was God. So, the Son is the same essence as the Father. Kind of one verse that teaches both things. He's eternal with God, and he's the same essence as God. And then John 1.2 says, Through him all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. And so he must be uncreated, because he's not part of all things. Anyways, the Arians countering this would then quote Colossians 1.15, that says that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation. And that genitive is somewhat open to interpretation. They would say it's of creation, which means that he must be created. But Athanasius said, no, he's the firstborn of all creation, demonstrates that the Son is other than the whole creation, and not a creature. And so this is why, actually, the NIV and the CSB translate it as the firstborn over all creation. So he's not created. Then in Proverbs 8.22, it's talking about wisdom. And ESV and the others just say, God possessed me at the beginning of his creation. But, you know, that's the Hebrew, and that's the normal reading of the text. It could simply say, God possessed wisdom at the beginning. But in the Alexacts, the Aseptujan, the Greek translation that the Church Fathers were using, it translated that word as created, not just possessed. It would say, God created me at the beginning of his creation. So now you can see how the Arians would interpret this verse. So, you know, my response would have just been, well, this is a metaphorical thing about wisdom, not talking about Jesus. So it's kind of interesting to me that the Nicenes never took that route. And rather than saying that Proverbs 8 was just a fanciful and figurative metaphor of personalizing wisdom with no reference to the coming Messiah, instead, they doubled down, and all of them agreed it must be referring to Christ. They kind of disagreed on how exactly to interpret it, but they agreed that the Arians were misinterpreting it. Before this controversy erupted, Origen, one of the Antonicene fathers, who was more familiar with the Hebrew and skeptical of the Alexact translation, interpreted it as referring to eternal generation. Nevertheless, the Nicenes of the 4th century, even though they were not exactly united on how to interpret Proverbs 8-22, they maintained that it was a blasphemous and impious thought to say that God could ever be without his wisdom. And all of their interpretations rejected the possibility that Jesus was created or originate. In other words, they maintained that the Son was eternal with the Father. Hebrews 1 was another one of the important verses, because it says he's the exact representation of God's essence. And then John 3 says that Jesus is the Son of God, begotten of the Father. There are a lot more of these scriptural passages. The section of the Creed on Christology reads, I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, born from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through him all things remain. So you can see it clearly teaches that he is eternal with the Father in the same essence as the Father. Consubstantial, when you see it, it just means of the same essence. He is light from light, invisible, sorry, image of the invisible God, the radiance of God's glory. Okay, so Nicaea clearly taught that Jesus is fully God, eternal with God in the same essence as God. So that was Nicaea, Jesus is fully God, eternal with God in the same essence as God. Next up is Constantinople, Jesus is fully man. He has the body of a man and also the soul of a man. So after Nicaea, Athanasius and the others still had to argue against Arianism quite a bit. The big fight was for the deity of Christ. One of Athanasius' friends against the Arians was a guy by the name of Apollinaris. But in trying to argue for Christ's deity, he denied the full humanity of Christ. He said that when Jesus took on flesh, he just wrapped himself in the body of a man, kind of like putting on clothes, but he still retained the soul of the eternal word. So a human flesh but divine mind. Gregory of Nazianzus responded saying that whatever is not assumed cannot be healed. If Jesus didn't have the soul of a man, then our bodies cannot be healed. Strong argument, right? So he resided over the Council of Constantinople in 381, and the first canon of Constantinople rejected Apollinarianism by name. The Council of Athanasius in 431 established that Jesus is one person. So he acts as one person, and he is named as one person. The unity of the person of Christ was usually at play, and you could see it in the answer to one simple question. So here's a question. Is Mary the mother of God? The word was theotakos, and actually should be rendered the bearer of God. So is Mary the bearer of God? When a new bishop took office in Constantinople, he was asked this question, and he replied, No, we ought not say Mary is the mother of God, but rather the mother of Christ. And he maintained that we should use names of Jesus which are appropriate to whatever expression we are giving of him. His name was Nestorius, and he had a whole taxonomy for this, and he thought scripture itself set forth the example for us. One example he liked was when Jesus said, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again. Nestorius said he didn't say, Destroy this godhead. Instead, he said, Destroy this temple. Therefore, we ought to follow suit and only use names for Jesus which are natural to his humanity, like Messiah, Christ, Lord, and Jesus, when we are referring to human actions. That was Nestorius. The bishop of Alexandria at the time was a man by the name of Cyril, and he objected vociferously. He said we absolutely can and should say that Mary is the mother of God, and he raised this objection based on the unity of the Son. He said that there are two critical mistakes that Nestorius made. First of all, natures don't do actions. Only persons do actions. It's not like Jesus's humanity does one thing and his deity does another. Instead, any time we ask the question, Who did it? when we read the life of Christ in the Gospels, the answer is always one and the same person, Jesus. So that's the first thing. Jesus acts as one person. The second thing is, Jesus is named as one person. Anytime you find the name of Jesus in a sentence, you can always change it out. You can always change out his name with any other designation for Jesus, and the sentence will still be Christologically correct. This is because of the unity of his person. Who died? Jesus did, right? Is God an accurate designation for Jesus? Yes, so then it's accurate to say that God died. Or let's try another one. Who upholds the universe by the word of his power? Jesus does. Well, Jesus can also accurately be described as a man from Nazareth, right? So then it's accurate to say, a man from Nazareth upholds the universe by the word of his power. Now, these are called paradoxical predicates, and they are sometimes found in Scripture, like when Acts 20, 28 speaks of the blood of God. Now, why are they paradoxical? Because it's still okay to predicate different actions of Jesus according to his two natures. It's true that Jesus died predicated on his humanity. In the same way, Jesus upholds the universe according to his deity. So he's immutable with respect to his deity. He experiences change with respect to his humanity. So this work of distinguishing his actions is sometimes called partitive exegesis, and it was a long-standing tradition in the Antiochian tradition, going back to Gregory of Nazianzus. Nestorius was well-educated in this tradition, and there's a chance he just misinterpreted his own tradition. So, whereas they predicated verbs, he distinguished between persons. The Council of Ephesus stood on the side of Cyril of Alexandria over against Nestorius, defending the unity of the one divine Son of God. So Cyril of Alexandria taught strongly that Jesus is just one person. There's not like a God-Jesus and a human-Jesus both doing different things. At the same time, we know that Jesus is both God and human, so I guess I have some godness and some humanness, right? We call these natures. And this is the same concept, this natures concept is the same concept of what they debated earlier at Nicaea when they said that Jesus is the same nature as God. So godness and humanness, these are his natures, right? So the question is, when these two natures come together, do they mix, or do they stay separate without mixing? I think kids like Rice Krispies more than Chocolate Puffs and their cereal because the Chocolate Rice Krispies mix with the milk, right? It kind of makes a chocolate milk. So are Jesus' godness and humanness more like the Chocolate Puffs, which don't mix at all? Or are they like the Chocolate Rice Krispies, which turn the milk into chocolate milk? And if the Chocolate Puffs is not a good example, because there are some mixtures, like imagine a bowl of marbles with some milk in it, right? Here's the problem. The Bible is pretty clear that he became like us in every respect, right? And also that we share in flesh and blood. So our salvation depends on us sharing the same nature with Jesus exactly. He has to have real, unaltered humanness. So if his godness mixes with the humanness, and now the plain milk, you know, is turned into chocolate milk, it's no longer normal milk, and we have a problem. So if you think of the milk as humanity, it has to stay completely and exactly just normal milk, right? If it's just chocolate milk, they're not the same natures anymore. And this is what they said at Calzone. Not the cereal thing, right? But they thought that the two natures are not mixed in any way. The word that they used for mixed is confused, okay? So the nature of the milk and Rice Krispies get confused when they unite. Here's the language from the definition. The Lord Jesus Christ is acknowledged in two natures, unconfusedly. The difference of the natures being in no way removed because of the union, but rather the properties of each nature being preserved. So that was it. Now, because the milk, which was not chocolate at all, all of a sudden becomes chocolatey, and the cereal, which used to be dry, is not anymore. Their properties are not preserved, right? Now, what does it actually mean for His natures to be united? Actually, one of the things I like about bad theology metaphors, and pretty much all metaphors about Christology or the Trinity are bad, is demonstrating where they fall short. They fall short in a lot of areas. But one of the reasons marbles and milk is a bad example is that the milk and the marbles are not really united, at least not in the way that Jesus' natures are united. In the definition of Chalcedon, it says that the natures are united unchangeably, indivisibly, and inseparably. So you can change how united the marbles and the milk are, right? You can even separate them by just taking out the marbles and drying them off. But that doesn't work when you're talking about Jesus and His two natures, right? They can't ever be separated. There's something about that metaphor that just doesn't really represent how their union works. Even the extent to which His natures are united never changes. In Chalcedon, they defined the Christological definition as, Jesus saw as two different natures. One corresponds to Him being a man, and one corresponding to Him being God. Now, they didn't just come up with this definition out of nowhere. There was actually a guy teaching that the natures do mix. His name was Eutychius. Rhymes with you, the keys. Eutychius taught that when His divine nature and human nature were united, they formed one new nature. He was a student and an ally in the contemporary of Cyril of Alexandria, the hero of the whole Nestorius controversy. Cyril of Alexandria actually has one place in his writings where he says that Jesus has one nature. But what he meant by the word nature when he used it, scisus, by the way, not hypostasis or etia, scisus, was actually probably not nature in this context. He was, if you read the context of it, he was using it to mean personal reality, not nature. So, Cyril said that Jesus doesn't have two personal realities, hypostasis, but just one, right? So he wasn't trying to say there's not two natures, just not two personal realities, and Nestorius was saying that yes, he does. So you can imagine that Eutychius, rhymes with you, the keys, when he was reading, he read a lot of Cyril of Alexandria, and when he was, you can see that he would then take this to mean that, well, he has one nature, so that must mean that the two natures, the divine and human natures, mix. Alright, well, everyone saw the problem with this. Even Eutychius himself was kind of aware that it causes these theological problems. If his divinity is no longer the same, and his humanity is no longer the same, that's an issue. So, basically the entire church realized this was an issue. From Alexandria to Rome to Constantinople, they agreed that something was wrong with the Christology and the thinking of Eutychius, this guy, and they decided we needed to have a council. So that is the reason they called Chalcedon, was to deal with this issue of the Christology of Eutychius. And the bishop of Rome at the time, Leo I, drafted what's called the Tome of Leo. It was just a letter to the emperor of Constantinople, Lavian, in which he put forward a new definition which dealt with this issue, and they accepted this definition at Chalcedon. Not everyone agreed with the definition of Chalcedon. Everyone disagreed with Eutychius, the natures don't mix. And they agreed that Chalcedon needed to happen, of course, but they didn't agree with the results of Chalcedon. A lot of people still said that, no, there's just one nature. So they maintained that they were in line with Cyril of Alexandria. Remember, Cyril of Alexandria said there's one scisus, there's one nature. He meant something different. But they said, we're in line with that guy. You guys are wrong to say there's two natures. But in a mysterious way, these two natures come together into one nature, but there's no mixture at all. He's completely the same as us and completely the same as God. And that context where you have some people who agreed with the Chalcedonian definition, that's us, by the way, we agree with it, is actually the context for the last counsel that we're going to discuss today. And in my opinion, it really shows why the definition of Chalcedon was correct. So for the last one, which is the next one we're going to cover, it's the very last part of our outline for today. Remember we said that Jesus is the man who is God, fully God, fully man. One person, two natures, two wills. And the next counsel examines whether or not Jesus had two wills or one will. There were three giants of the faith that caused some problems in their wake. They were kind of misunderstood by some of their own students. The first is Athanasius. When the Arians taught that Jesus wasn't fully God, Athanasius said, yes, he is. Jesus is the very word of God, clothed in flesh. Well, Apollinaris, one of Athanasius' allies, took this to mean that Jesus really was just this divine mind wrapped in a human body. Same sort of teaching, the word clothed in flesh, just extended to the point that it got heretical. That was Athanasius. The second here at this time was Gregory of Nazianzus. He thought that we ought to predicate Jesus' more sublime expressions according to his divinity, and his more humble expressions according to his humanity. Well, one of Gregory's students, a couple generations later, took this to mean that Jesus himself ought to be predicated, Jesus himself ought to be predicated according to either his divine or human nature. Not just his expressions, but his very person ought to be predicated, I guess. So, the same sort of teaching, just extended to the point that it got heretical. That was Gregory of Nazianzus. The third hero at this time was Cyril of Alexandria. Over against Nestorius, he taught the unity of the natures in the one person of Jesus Christ. But his language actually said that Jesus had one incarnate nature in the divine logos. So, it's easy to see how one of his younger allies took this to mean that they mixed together into one new nature, which wasn't quite the same as ours anymore. Same sort of teaching, just extended to the point that it got heretical. The cool thing is, if you string these three heretical misunderstandings together, they actually tell you the full story of all four councils and how we got from Nicaea all the way to the last one in Chalcedon. Isn't that cool? After Chalcedon, there was actually a major political instability in the empire because, whereas the definition of Chalcedon says that there are two natures in the person of Jesus Christ, a lot of the empire still says that he only has one nature. Not only that, they started to see he has one energy and one will. Now, these positions are going to be important for where we're going, and so they're named monoenergism and monothelitism. One energy and one will. Some of the people who believed in Chalcedon, that he has two natures, they said that they could actually agree with these new positions because they started to make a distinction between his essence and his energy. They started to say that even though, yes, he has two essences, one divine and one human, nevertheless, he can still have one energy because his energy is distinct from his essence. Some of the two nature guys, the Chalcedonians, started to say, we can agree that he has one energy and that he has one will because he has this distinction between energy and essence. Specifically, this belief that he had one will started to gain traction. When the emperor saw this, he was like, wait, the one nature guys and the two nature guys agree about something? Hey, can we put this in writing and get some unity around it? They took a poem on the patriarchs. Remember, there's five patriarchs. In the East, you've got two of them to agree to it, so you just need one more. Well, the Bishop of Rome is one of the five patriarchs. We just need to get a sign off from the Bishop of Rome, and he would have a majority. So, the emperor sent a letter to Pope Honorius I asking him if he would endorse this position that Jesus only has one will. Pope Honorius I reasoned that, well, with most humans it wouldn't work, but because Jesus' human will is perfect, it will never contradict the divine will, so yes, he has only one will. And so he replied with his letter back to the emperor that he would endorse this position. Well, this was supposed to cause peace, but it only made things much, much worse, especially now for the pope because now there's people in his own camp that started to be upset. One of them was named Maximus the Confessor. They just saw the pope's actions as compromise and accepting Christological heresy for the sake of political expediency. So these people were upset, and the emperor did not like the conflict, so he said that there would be no more arguing about this, and he actually made a rule that people were not allowed to argue about this anymore. Well, of course, guys like Maximus the Confessor, I mean, that's his name, Confessor, would not be quiet about the issue, and so he, Maximus the Confessor, had his right hand cut off and his tongue cut out by the emperor. So, okay, and people were obviously pretty upset about this, and it's because there are actually pretty major theological issues with it that we'll get to later on, but thankfully the next generation did not continue in this theological heresy. The rejected monothelitism, or monothelitism, hangs in part to the persecuted voices of the previous generation, guys like Maximus the Confessor. But, you know, also the Muslims kind of played a role, because some parts of the church that might have offered an opposition voice, that they would have had a good agreement with us about post-satirism in Syria, had now been conquered by the Arabs during this whole controversy, so these voices were no longer heard. In any case, the church that was left convened a council in 681 in Constantinople, the name of the council was Constantinople III, and they officially decreed that Jesus has two wills and two energies, and they anathematized the monothelite position that he has only one will, as well as anathemizing Pope Norris I by name, which, by the way, is a real problem for papal infallibility. Anyway, this council, Constantinople III, is the last ecumenical council that dealt with Christology. Now let me ask you a question. Why do you think that a church, in a context of major political instability, was willing to raise this to the level of heresy and anathematize all opposition? Well, it's not, like we said earlier, there's major theological problems with it. It's not exactly apparent at first glance, but if you accept that Jesus has only one will, you either end up saying that he cannot be saved, or you end up saying that God has three wills, and here's why. If you believe that the will is aligned with the nature, then you're saying that he has only one will, a divine will, and that means you end up denying that he has a human will, and if he's not assumed a human will, then our human wills cannot be saved, and we cannot be saved. So it's a pretty major issue, this is the Apollinarian problem, going back to Gregory of Nazianzus, back in 381, with the first council of Constantinople. Now, if you say that the will is aligned with the person, which is kind of a modern notion anyways, but you say it's aligned with the person, you know, Jesus is one person, so he has one will, then also, well, the Holy Spirit is one person, and the Father is one person, so now you have three wills of God, which goes against an even more historic teaching that there is only one will in God. You know, this idea that it would be associated with the person is kind of a modern notion anyways, so it's kind of anachronistic to read it back into it, but if you accept the will is aligned with the nature, then the belief that Jesus has two wills is just a logical implication from the belief that Jesus has two natures. In other words, Constantinople III is just the Christological outworking of the definition of chastisement. And that is the last Christological controversy that we're going to cover today, and it concludes our outline that Jesus is the man who is God, fully God, fully man, one person, two natures, two wills.