christology_stuff 1

In this information, the speaker discusses the topics of the personal work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. They mention that they will first cover the person of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and then move on to discussing the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit. The speaker also talks about the importance of understanding the historic understanding of the person of Christ and how it forms the bedrock of the Christian faith. They mention various councils and controversies related to the person of Christ, such as the Nestorian and Monophysite controversies. The speaker also discusses compromises and course corrections made in relation to Chalcedon and the Hanaticon. They mention the Acacian Schism and the role of Justinian in reaffirming Chalcedon. The speaker briefly touches on the topic of monothelitism and the rejection of this idea by figures like Maximus the Confessor. They also mention the intramural debate surrounding Apollinarianism and its later treatment as heresy. Lastly In these two weeks we're going to cover the personal work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. So we're going to split them up according to the person first. So first we'll say who is Jesus and who is the Holy Spirit. And then next week we'll cover the work of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. So that's like the Atonement. Even the Incarnation, really, and the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. And then the work of the Holy Spirit, specifically how it works out in the Church and things like that. So this week we're going to look at the person of Christ. And then if we have time left, a short look at the work of the Holy Spirit. When you think of the person of Christ, what do you think of? What first comes to mind? It's probably common to think of the story of the Gospels, and that's not wrong. Maybe your mind is even drawn to the history that we're going to talk about today. But most people, even most Christians today, probably don't have a good working vocabulary to understand the contours of the Christian historic understanding of the person of Christ. When I say historic, I mean historic. When we cover the work of Christ later on, it will be drawn more on modern discussion. The doctrine of the person of Christ is as Catholic as it can be. Remember in this class, when we say Catholic, when we don't precede the word Roman, we mean universal, or shared by all two churches throughout the ages. This doctrine was sorted out prior to the Middle Ages, and it's the bedrock on which most of the rest of the Christian faith practiced. Between the legalization of Christianity and the fall of the Romans to that bar, variance got opened a very short window, about 150 years, in which Christianity could develop free from persecution. Libraries and institutions grew moss, as they say, and the bedrock of the church's doctrine could be laid. As a reminder of how close to the West's demise Chalcedon was, remember that the same Leo I, who wrote the Tome, which was the driving force of Chalcedon's Christology, was the same one who went out from the gates of Rome and pleaded with Attila the Hun not to sack his city. We talk about the pastor-theologian like that's a big deal. The acceptance of the first and last councils roughly mirrors the political situations of the day. Nicaea happened in 325, and Constantinople happened in 381. Those were both adopted at a time when there was a strong unity across the Roman Empire. So those were also accepted across the Roman Empire. There was widespread agreement on those two councils in both the East and the West. All five patriarchs adopted those decisions. The Council of Chalcedon was held after the East-West split of 395, and accordingly the East has always had a strong anti-Chalcedonian contingency. The official deposition of the Western Emperor happened on 476, in reflection of the political and institutional instability of the empire after Chalcedon. Cyril, was he a moral or immoral guy? We know that he was Orthodox, but we have a chart on the Nestorian controversy, which shows Archbishop Nestorius rejecting Theotokos. Then Cyril studies everything, and he writes to Rome about it, gets their approval in a letter, and he opposes twelve anathemas to it. Then there's the Council of Ephesus in 431. So he's an Orthodox guy, but we're bored about his methods. And it seems that Nestorius really did double down on his teaching. The Eutychian controversy, that's the monophysite controversy, Eusebius seemed to teach, well he did teach, that Jesus had one nature. And so he wouldn't quite say that Jesus was consubstantial with us, but he would say he was fully human. He was also fully God, but he was just one nature. So, you know, one person and also one nature. He still maintained that Jesus was fully man. What's interesting to look here is that if you read Cyril's teaching, he doesn't teach very strongly on the fact that there are two natures. He's very strong on the one-person aspect. You can see how a follower like Eutychius, especially, he's like 66 years old, so he's, well, I shouldn't say anything ageist here, but you can see how he would be persuaded, or could have had the wrong idea, and just be very sure that his idea was correct. The same thing probably happened with Apollinarius. If you read Athanasius' writings, he doesn't teach very strongly against Apollinarius' idea that the Logos sort of just wore clothes, you know, wore humanity as clothes. You get that idea almost from Athanasius. He doesn't teach that, but there's nothing where he explicitly states that that's not what's going on. So that's how these things happen. So, Zeno probably waited so long to disregard Chalcedon because before Odoacer deposed Romulus, there wasn't as much of a reason to try to appeal to the anti-Chalcedonian portions of the kingdom if it meant trouble with Rome. So, you know, Chalcedon rejected Monophysitism in 451, Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor in 476, Zeno publishes the Hanaticon in 482, six years later, and then the Roman Synod, two years later, said that they rejected the Hanaticon. That started the Acacian Schism, and they each excommunicated each other. So that's Zeno's compromise. The Acacian Schism is really marked out by the Hanaticon and the restoration or the rise of the Justinian dynasty. So Justinian didn't come to rule until 527, but nine years before that, Justin I came to power in 518, and that's whenever they reaffirmed Chalcedon. By the time that the Justinian Empire came around, the East had spent more time disregarding Chalcedon than it had actually spent time underneath Chalcedon. Justinian spoke Latin, so this was a help in uniting them with the West. Also, Justinian was going to invade Rome later on, so it's always helpful to have some people on your side theologically before you conquer them. The monophysite compromises and course corrections. After Chalcedon, we've already talked about the Hanaticon. The Hanaticon was a place where they were trying to make sure that the people who were anti-Chalcedonian could still be a part of the Empire. Remember that Zeno didn't own the West anymore, and he was the sole emperor of what was left of the Roman Empire, but Rome was no longer a part of it. It was just like Egypt and Palestine and places like that. Most of those people were monophysite, so he just wanted to basically roll back the time. Everything was fine until Chalcedon. They already had something where they were able to reject Eutychianism. They had a nice Orthodox belief, except for the part where there's two natures that are distinct. He was like, why don't we just have the Hanaticon? It doesn't mention the two natures part. It mentions everything else, so it can be pretty Orthodox. We'll just roll back time to go before 451. That's what the Hanaticon was. The West rejected that idea, so we've already talked about that. Justinian went back to Chalcedon because he was trying to basically win over the West. There were also other pro-Chalcedonian monks and people like that in Constantinople at the time, but it wasn't really there. When he did that, of course, I haven't mentioned this, but the whole thing that happened with the historians at that time, especially in Antioch, they just felt like, okay, it's time for us to go, so they left and they went to Palestine. There were other reasons, too. People left and went for the iconoclasm issues that we're not going to talk about today. They're not with Christology. The last major thing in this sort of time period that happened was another compromise against Chalcedon was this thing called monothelitism, which started out as trying to say, well, Christ must just have one energy, and if he has one energy. Remember, the big thing with historianism is that natures don't act, people act. Therefore, they're trying to say there must be one energy, and if there's one energy, then that must mean there's only one will. That is called monothelitism. They're kind of trying to say, yeah, we agree that there's two natures, but there's only one will. The reason that Honorius accepted this was he said that this is a heretical opinion, but he said since Jesus' will, since he was a perfect human being, he was able to have the same will as his divine nature. Will, however, is attributed to the nature of a person, not to the person of the person. You see Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, and there's a lot of other reasons to reject this idea. One of the major guys was Maximus the Confessor. He said, no, no, no, this is not okay, and they actually went back and they had to post-anathematize Honorius. They had to posthumously anathematize him. All right, so Apollinarius, he was made the bishop in 360, and Gregory of Nazianzus didn't really go after him until after the Consul of Constantinople. The letters that you see where he's interacting with us happen after it. So Constantinople did not make a big issue out of Apollinarianism, and the official released, I'm sure that they talked about it. You can probably look for discussions there in terms of the parties and the disapprovals, but it was basically an intramural debate at that time. But then later on, they treated it as heresy, and he has this famous quote in his letters on Apollinarianism where he says, that which has not been assumed cannot be healed. All right. One interesting thing, too, to look at is the reason that Charlemagne was the reason the Carolingian Empire took off and was such a successful first Christian kingdom was because the Roman emperors didn't compromise on Christology. They probably could have said, you know, it doesn't matter, you guys are Arians, to some of the other people, but they wouldn't. So that's an interesting little thing from Christology, how that affected. Okay.