Jesus' Two Natures and the Chelcedon Creed

Church conflict is nothing new

SBC is going through conflicts right now, one being women pastors

Rick Warren and his speech to the SBC messengers

Are we going to keep bickering over secondary issues, or are we going to keep the main thing the main thing?

We need to finish the task, and THAT will make God smile.

Thank you everybody, I LOVE you.

Segway into an exchange with the present conflict with Christ’s nature within himself

At last, at last the villain has gone! The Lord, knowing that this man’s spite has been growing daily and harming the body of the Church, has cut him off like a plague and taken away the reproach of Israel. The living are delighted by his departure. Perhaps the dead are sorry at his arrival. Indeed, we ought to be alarmed: they might be so annoyed by his presence among them that they send him back! Great care must therefore be taken. It is your holiness’s special duty to tell those in charge of the funeral to lay a very large, very heavy stone on Cyril’s grave, in case he tries to come back and show his unstable mind among us again.

The conflict went from Jesus’ relationship with the Father to Jesus’ relationship within himself

Antiochenes: Theologians of Antioch

Emphasized the literal historical meaning of Scripture

Emphasized Christ was a real human being with a complete human nature like us

If Jesus was to save humans he had to be totally human

Emphasized the distinction between Christ’s human and divine natures

Jesus frustration, ignorance, growth in wisdom and grace cannot be applied to his divine nature since that would make God’s nature weak and limited.

Also his divine qualities cannot be applied to his human nature or it might turn him into super man

To avoid this the Antiochenes kept the two natures of Christ totally apart.

To the degree that it destroyed the union of these natures

Criticism

“The divine Son chose a particular man, Jesus of Nazareth, came and dwelt in Him, sanctified Him, and spoke through Him.”

“Antiochenes thought of Jesus as little more than the supreme example of how God could dwell in and work through a man.”

Alexandrians: Theologians of Alexandria

Emphasized the allegorical sense of Scripture

Emphasized the divine nature in Christ

Re-creation and salvation of man must have the divine as its source.

Thus the activity of Christ in the gospels was that of God himself at the exclusion of the humanity of Jesus.

The Alexandrians insisted that the divine Logos was the supreme (or even only) source of activity in Christ.

Thus instead of extreme separation as the Antiochenes did, the Alexandrians fused them together always at the expense of the human nature.

Jesus’ humanity was just a tool or instrument for the divine Son to use.

Extreme examples of the Alexandrians had them deny the existence of a human mind in the Christ

They feared too much emphasis on Christ’s humanity would break Christ into two different persons, two separate Sons in Christ

If above the case then we couldn’t say: “Jesus is the Son of God” but only “Jesus had a relationship with the Son of God.”

Two heretical examples:

Apollinarianism

Apollinarius was an Alexandrian thinker and strong opponent of Arianism (thus a friend of Athanasius).

Became Bishop of Laodicea in 361 and in 370s got in trouble for his teaching:

Christ did not have a human mind or spirit at all.

The human mind was the source of all human weakness and sin, thus Christ could not have it.

The divine and infinite mind of the Son or Logos took the place of a human mind in Christ: He was a divine mind in a human body.

This is how Jesus was kept from sin.

Apollinarius was concerned about splitting Jesus into separate persons and so he axed the human.

The Council of Constantinople in 381 (final Nicene Creed) condemned him.

The orthodox rebuttal to Apollinarianism is found in Gregory of Nazianzus’ (Nah-ze-ann-us) statement: What has not been taken up has not been healed.”

This Alexandrian heretic made the Alexandrians pause and reconsider how to deal with the issue of Jesus being truly divine, and man, yet not two persons.

2. Nestorianism

Nestorius, an Antiochene thinker, became patriarch of Constantinople in 428

The rivalry between Constantinople and Alexandria for Christian influence in the East

Nestorius argued against the growing trend to call Mary theotokos (Greek for “the birth-giver of God”)

Alexandrian thinkers (Cyril: patriarch of Alexandria) defended this title ardently

Alexandrian theology said Christ is God, thus the woman who gave birth to Christ gave birth to God

This is understood as proper theology across the board today

As a faithful Antiochene who gave a sharp divide to the Christ’s human and divine natures, Nestorius argued that Mary gave birth to the human Jesus and then as a man the Divine Son united with the personhood of Jesus.

Thus, Mary should be called Christotokos (Greek for “birth-giver of Christ”).

The Debate:

Cyril (patriarch of Alexandria) came down hard on this.

His brilliance is undeniable, he is still studied today by scholars. But he was just as quick to make personal remarks too against his opponents. It was not enough to win the debate, he had to make his opponent feel less like a man as well.

In fact when Cyril died, a Antiochene opponent named Theodoret of Cyrrhus who was known to be gentle-hearted said this about him to Domnus patriarch of Antioch:

At last, at last the villain has gone! The Lord, knowing that this man’s spite has been growing daily and harming the body of the Church, has cut him off like a plague and taken away the reproach of Israel. The living are delighted by his departure. Perhaps the dead are sorry at his arrival. Indeed, we ought to be alarmed: they might be so annoyed by his presence among them that they send him back! Great care must therefore be taken. It is your holiness’s special duty to tell those in charge of the funeral to lay a very large, very heavy stone on Cyril’s grave, in case he tries to come back and show his unstable mind among us again.

Cyril and the Alexandrians argued that in Christ as “one incarnate nature of the Logos”

But to the Antiochenes it sounded like they were denying that Christ had two distinct natures.

The confusion was centered on the words physis and the word hypostasis

They were used in the debate to mean nature and person interchangeably

(remember, to settle the trinity debate, ousia became defined as essence, and hypostasis became defined as person).

But in the Christological debate, that meaning of hypostasis to mean person and not nature had not transferred yet.

So when Cyril and the Alexandrians said that Christ had only one physis, he was really using the word more in the sense of “person” than “nature”.

Cyril was denying that the man Jesus of Nazareth was a different person or hypostasis from the divine Logos.

However, when Antiochenes like Nestorius said that Christ had two physeis, two natures, Cyril thought they meant He was two persons (which some heretic did actually mean).

When Cyril heard Nestorius deny that Mary was the mother of God, this confirmed his suspicion that Nestorius was arguing that Christ consisted of two different persons.

Skipping some church politics, a Roman Emperor Marcian (450-457) called a council at Chalcedon in 451 (near Constantinople).

There were 400 bishops present, almost all from the East, together with ambassadors of pope Leo.

The Chalcedon Creed or Definition combined the Christologies of Antioch and Alexandria

The hand out of the creed has the bold letters that expressed concerns from the Alexandrian side and the underlined words express the concerns of Antiochene side:

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.

It condemned especially the error of Nestorianism, which denied the unity of the divine person in Christ; the error of Apollinarianism, which denied the completeness of Christ’s human nature; and the error known as Eutychianism, which denied the duality and distinction of the divine and human natures of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith 8.2 Christ the Mediator

Read summary of creed on page 305

Most Christians recognized and accepted the Council of Chalcedon as the fourth ecumenical Council, and its Creed as the third ecumenical Creed

There was just one part of the council itself that the pope did not like

canon 28 which stated that the church of Rome enjoyed its supreme status because “old Rome” had been the capital city of the Roman Empire; but now that Constantinople (new Rome) was the new capital, its church must enjoy equal rights with Rome in matters of Church government, and rank second in honor to Rome.

Pope Leo hated this, even though it gave Rome more honor it was only a matter of time before Rome being the former capital of the Empire would be a distant memory and Constantinople would become higher in honor

The pope would argue that such honor and authority came from Peter himself

This was just the beginning rumbles of a later split between East and West at the turn of the first century

Apostles Creed

Nicene Creed

Chalcedon Creed

Athanasian Creed

Unknown author that combines orthodox trinitarian doctrine and Christological doctrine to declare what one must believe to be saved.

2 Timothy 1:13–14 ESV

13 Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 14 By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.