Do you want a deeper connection to the historic roots of Christianity, but don’t know where to start? Dr. Matt Hoskin of the Davenant Institute joins us to tell the story of the first thousand years of Christianity through the seven ecumenical councils. Along the way we’ll discuss the controversies surrounding the divinity and humanity of Christ, the veneration of icons, and the political intrigue that surrounded it all. Buckle up for a wild tour of church history full of twists, turns, and unexpected outcomes.
Show Notes
Davenant Institute: https://davenantinstitute.org/
Matt’s Podcast Devotion to Christ: Anglican Spirituality, a Tradition for Today: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/devotion-to-christ-anglican-spirituality-a/id1647857228
Support us on Patreon
Website: thatllpreach.io
[00:00:00] Do you want a deeper connection to the historic roots of Christianity, but you're not sure where to start?
[00:00:06] On this episode, Dr. Matt Hoskin of the Davin Institute joins us to tell the story of the first thousand years of Christianity through the Ecumenical Councils.
[00:00:17] Along the way we're going to discuss the controversy surrounding the divinity and humanity of Christ, the veneration of icons, the trinity, as well as the political intrigue happening behind the scenes.
[00:00:29] So buckle up for a wild tour of church history full of twists, turns and unexpected outcomes.
[00:00:42] Welcome to Thatll Preach. We've got Matt Hoskin on today from the Davin Institute. This is his second time on the show.
[00:00:50] If you guys have been listening he came on before to talk about the Desert Fathers and gotten to all kinds of great stories about monks fighting demons and all the strange things that we find in church history.
[00:01:01] But Matt is actually working on a lecture series that I'm helping edit on church history and he's going to be teaching some courses for Davin.
[00:01:09] So Matt, thanks for joining us on your lunch break to get some education on church history in for us.
[00:01:18] Well, thanks for having me on, Brian. It was really great last time so I'm looking forward to our conversation again today.
[00:01:24] Well, you know, this is something that I've been thinking about for a while now because we want to talk about the historic creeds and different councils and all these types of things that have been populating a lot of conversation.
[00:01:38] I think at least, you know, I'm in a non-denom church and we've started reciting some creeds and when you talk about creeds it ties into councils which is really something that I am ashamed that I know very little about.
[00:01:51] But from your lectures, from your classes, conversations with you, they are a really pivotal part of understanding our identity as Christians and the heritage of the church and all these types of things.
[00:02:04] So I'd love to hear from you. Why do you think, especially Protestants and modern evangelicals need to understand the councils and the creeds that come from the councils?
[00:02:16] Yeah, great. So thanks. That's a good question and I think the first thing is the creeds are the most important part or the dogmatic statements are the most important part from the councils for everyone, for us as Protestants but also for Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox.
[00:02:31] The councils do a whole range of work for the ordering of the life of the church but even at the time that they were done people were more concerned about the question of how do you articulate the Trinity?
[00:02:43] Or how do you talk about Jesus being both fully man and fully God at the same time? That's always been more important to people than the question of how many bishops are necessary to make valid consecration, which the answer is three according to the
[00:02:57] And that's one of the first things we need to know is councils deal with both these doctrinal questions that sort of trigger them but then because they get a whole bunch of bishops together in one room, they do a whole bunch of stuff about church order and church law, which we call canon law.
[00:03:14] But really today what our focus is not going to be on the canon law stuff. I am a canon law guy so I find that exciting but most people don't.
[00:03:22] So we're going to focus more as you say on the creeds and the dogmatic stuff, the questions of Christian doctrine and the creeds are really useful for all of us, whether thinking the Nicene Creed or then it's sort of update from the second ecumenical council of
[00:03:41] Constantinople which is in 381 or the other statements that come out about doctrine and helping you set just sort of what is the playing field of acceptable Christian teaching on certain questions.
[00:03:56] And then there's room within that to play but it's sort of if you step outside these terms then you're actually going to dangerous territory that someone else has already done usually and there's a reason why we have a creed.
[00:04:12] So if you take for example if you understand the council of Nicea which is one of the hardest to understand because a lot of the sources about it are written long after the fact we don't have any original documents from the council.
[00:04:26] But if you want to come to understand that creed in its original context, you will sort of learn that there are a few phrases that were put in there for very specific reasons.
[00:04:37] Because at the council of Nicea, the main doctrinal issue which I'm sure Brian knows is there's this guy Arius and he's saying that there was a time when God the Word did not exist.
[00:04:52] And what that means is that Jesus can't be fully God as a result of that.
[00:04:59] And that means if he's not fully God, he's not able to actually take on the burden of human sin to save us because no human can actually take all of the penalty and power of sin upon himself for an atoning sacrifice.
[00:05:11] We're all too small and limited. So that's why we have the great high priest who is also God both sacrifice or in sacrifice.
[00:05:17] And so the council of Nicea is out to say, hey, how can we safely say that Jesus is fully God without collapsing him into the Father?
[00:05:26] Because that was Arius' big concern. Sort of if you imagine people who teach untruth as having pastoral concerns, Arius' concern was like, hey, we want to make sure that we see that Jesus and the Father are distinct from one another.
[00:05:42] But he ends up saying basically the result of what he teaches is Jesus is just a creation. He might be the greatest, first, most exalted creation, but he's a creature just like us.
[00:05:53] And so then in that creed if you look at it, you'll see there's a phrase, the most important word in the whole creed is he is of one substance or consubstantial or of one being or of one essence.
[00:06:04] These are the sort of normal English ways of doing it with the Father.
[00:06:10] So and once you come to see what Arius is driving at, you come to see why the creed has this very particular word in it.
[00:06:19] And what that word is there to guard is the full diffidentity of Jesus as well as the monotheism that Christianity shares with Judaism.
[00:06:27] To say that there is only one God. And so if we want to say Jesus and the Father and the Spirit are all God, we need a word, a way to say, to preserve the singularity, the unity of the Divine Persons as the one God.
[00:06:42] And it is so they start talking about the Divine Essence which is something which is basically all three persons of God at once. So that's the sort of to give you an example. Yeah.
[00:06:53] Well, that was the so that's the first ecumenical council, right? The Council of Nicaea and I'm pulling up the Wikipedia page. So you know, it's got to be true, right?
[00:07:02] Right. 325. And then so it's dealing with Christology and the nature of Christ. You mentioned that Arius who was the one who was saying that essentially Jesus was created.
[00:07:13] You know, what were his pastoral concerns? Was he trying to was he worried that the humanity of Jesus was being overlooked?
[00:07:21] He was concerned sort of there are sort of two pastoral concerns, I guess you could see coming from Arius. One of them is that Jesus is being is being sort of, we may say, what we call modalism.
[00:07:34] This idea that God just puts on different masks and sometimes he puts on the mask of Father and sometimes the mask of Son, sometimes the mask of Spirit.
[00:07:40] It's also called rebellionism, which doesn't do justice to what scripture teaches that, you know, one person doesn't talk to himself unless he's mentally ill. Right?
[00:07:48] So that's one thing he's concerned with. The other one is he kind of there's a desire to have someone who is God but not I don't know how to say it all the way God.
[00:08:00] One of the ideas that Christianity tries to grapple with as we try to articulate using philosophical language, the truths of scripture is that part of the philosophical inheritance that we need to clarify using scripture.
[00:08:15] So it's like this two way street from Greek philosophy of Plato and others is this extreme transcendence of God.
[00:08:24] And so then there's this idea and it comes out in Gnosticism as well as an Arianism and that God is above and beyond creation and that's true. Right?
[00:08:33] Orthodox Christianity, we all embrace that. Yes, God is completely other from us.
[00:08:39] There is a what you might call an ontological chasm between the created order and the creator.
[00:08:46] And so the question is, well, what can bridge that gap?
[00:08:49] And so you sort of see, well, you know in the divine economy it's incarnation of Jesus that bridges that gap.
[00:08:56] And so then the question areas and his sort of supporters, some of whom have higher rank than him. So dislike being called Arians.
[00:09:03] What these guys are trying to do is make a way for Jesus to be able to bridge that ontological gap.
[00:09:10] But what the Nicene, the Orthodox party says, well actually the big thing is God is so powerful he can bridge that gap and come to us without damaging his transcendence because he is that powerful.
[00:09:25] He's not completely inaccessible. We might not be able to reach up to him.
[00:09:29] But he is more than capable, more than powerful to come and reach down into us.
[00:09:35] So that's what Aries is trying to get at.
[00:09:39] So there were different factions in the church and they decided to just come together and hash it out essentially.
[00:09:47] I mean, what was the actual on the ground experience of this council?
[00:09:51] Yeah, so what happens in the 320s is this teaching of Aries becomes known to his bishop at a sort of a council with all of the local clergy.
[00:10:02] Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, one of my favorite named bishops that he matches his city so nicely.
[00:10:09] And Alexander says well that's not the teaching of the tradition. That's not the teaching of scripture. It's not the teaching of the fathers.
[00:10:15] And so he like he communicates Aries and so Aries goes and he starts recruiting other bishops to come and say, hey, no support me.
[00:10:24] And so guys like the Bishop of Nicomedia which is in Turkey, which is one of the homes of the Emperor who has one major palace in that city gets involved and sort of supports Aries.
[00:10:36] And so now Alexander starts also gathering his allies.
[00:10:41] And so Constantine arrives on the scene in 324 having just defeated a guy called Lysinius who was like his last opponent, the last other Emperor.
[00:10:50] So he's the only Emperor of the whole Empire now and he comes to the east and he finds this whole crisis about theology tearing the Eastern church apart.
[00:10:59] And so he says, look we need this resolved and it's clear that Constantine isn't interested in himself legislating what is true.
[00:11:07] He will enforce whatever the bishops decide but he needs the bishops to come to an agreement.
[00:11:11] And so he starts off he gets his sort of a right hand man who's an Orthodox Bishop who will support Nicaea when it comes called Osius of Cordova to come and he holds a couple councils in the east which condemn Aries.
[00:11:25] This isn't working basically so they call a big one which is the Council of Nicaea and we call it Ecumenical because the Oicuminae is the entire inhabited world.
[00:11:37] And so the desire was to draw as many bishops together, have them sit, come up with a solution to this doctrinal problem and then through the mechanisms of canon law and imperial law enforce the decision of the council on this question and theoretically put it to rest.
[00:11:55] And so people mostly Eastern bishops from Eastern Mediterranean and as far away as Persia come together.
[00:12:02] Osius is there from the west, I don't know not a lot of Latins make it to the council and it meets in 325.
[00:12:09] And so they do meet together and the majority groups determination is we need to find a way to exclude the teaching of Aries.
[00:12:16] And there are 5 bishops in the end who cannot in good conscience sign off on it.
[00:12:21] The aforementioned guy, Eusebius of Nicomedia, he's one of them and they actually get removed from being bishops and sent into exile until such a time as they can produce a statement of faith that can be accepted to allow them back into their cities.
[00:12:36] And Aries is removed from being a pastor in the church at the same time.
[00:12:40] So politics is really involved in this. I mean, this wouldn't really be possible unless Constantine had the wherewithal and the political power to force the issue essentially.
[00:12:51] Yeah, I mean that's the interesting thing all of the seven ecumenical councils like Nicaea is like a template for them.
[00:12:57] And all of them are called by emperors, all of them are paid for by emperors.
[00:13:02] And as time goes on emperors get more involved in the doctrinal outcomes of them.
[00:13:08] But the main thing is whether the emperor sometimes like Constantine, sometimes he doesn't care necessarily what the bishops decide as long as they decide and then he'll enforce their decisions for them.
[00:13:19] But it's not the sort of councils this large would be very difficult to hold without a Christian emperor there to have the funding and the wherewithal to make it happen.
[00:13:29] So just the council I know best is the Council of Calcedon, which happened in 451.
[00:13:34] And we actually I've read the letter that the emperor Marcian put out saying hey bishops who are allowed to come to the council can use for free the imperial staging posts.
[00:13:45] So they're like they're free and like people are allowed to give them free passage through their territory on their way to Calcedon for the council.
[00:13:52] So we know that the emperors are behind this they're backing it, they're giving it their support to get bishops together.
[00:13:59] And the councils had happened before but always on a much smaller scale than this because it's too hard large gatherings of people in the ancient world are always too hard to get together.
[00:14:09] 318 men is a lot of people if they're not all from the same city.
[00:14:12] That's a good point.
[00:14:13] You mentioned the prominence of emperors.
[00:14:17] So after Nicaea, so that's 325 we have and that was under Constantine.
[00:14:22] We have Constantine one.
[00:14:25] We have the first council of Constantinople and 381 sorry 381 a couple of decades later and that's Emperor Theodosius the first theodosius one.
[00:14:36] And what's going on with Constantinople?
[00:14:39] So Nicaea kind of hammers out the divinity of Jesus and then Constantinople, what's going on there?
[00:14:52] So the first council of Constantinople is basically the vindication of Nicaea.
[00:14:59] From the period Constantine dies at 337 and this Unconstantius II is a supporter of Aearius.
[00:15:07] And so then basically from that then until 381 there is back and forth Constantius holds councils that he's trying to make out to be his own version of an ecumenical council basically.
[00:15:19] And so there's some like 81 councils held in the century of varying sizes well over half or even three quarters have to do with this theological crisis.
[00:15:30] And so 381 is the Emperor of Calling what is basically the final council in the Nicene area in debate to finally put it to rest and the Nicene side wins basically.
[00:15:43] So that's what it's doing.
[00:15:45] And out of the documents of that council comes the creed that if you're in a church that recite something called the Nicene Creed, it's actually the creed of this council which is very similar to the Nicene Creed for most of it.
[00:15:58] The main difference being that at the end it says more than just and we believe in the Holy Spirit goes on it says the Lord the Giver in life who proceeds from the father with the father and the son together is worship and glorify to speak by the prophets.
[00:16:10] And so on and so forth.
[00:16:12] And it doesn't have the anti-Arian anathemas attached to it either because that's not really suitable for liturgical use to stand around an anathematizing areas every Sunday.
[00:16:22] So that's the council that creed comes out of is the Council of Constantinople and 381.
[00:16:28] So it's just trying to solidify what was decided like why do they need to have the second one? The controversy just kept ratcheting up.
[00:16:36] Aries is already long dead but people are continuing to oppose the teaching of the Council of Nicaea to come up with new flavors of Arianism over the over the decades.
[00:16:47] And so there's just there is a need under a Catholic or Orthodox Emperor to have a council that will basically re-institute Nicaea for them.
[00:16:59] And that's what happens here.
[00:17:00] And why do they add the little phrase?
[00:17:03] So what we say is a Nicene Creed today is actually the formulation of both Constantinople and Nicene insights into one creed.
[00:17:11] Why do they add the section that you mentioned?
[00:17:15] Because it's there and most of the other like there are lots of other texts like you mentioned out your church you have the Apostles Creed.
[00:17:21] The Apostles Creed also has a similar ending to the Nicene Constantinople and Creed.
[00:17:26] That's just sort of a standard creed formulation to say more about the Holy Spirit than just the fact that he exists.
[00:17:32] And one of the reasons is that there emerges after Nicaea people who are like, oh yeah it's fine we accept Nicaea.
[00:17:40] We think Jesus has got the Holy Spirit on the other hand is not God.
[00:17:45] And so then you end up with Athanasius and Basil the Great and his friend Gregory of Nez and his brother Gregory of Nissa coming up with these robust defenses of the full divinity of the Holy Spirit in these intervening decades.
[00:18:00] Why were they questioning the Holy Spirit?
[00:18:02] What was the concern there maybe even the pastoral concern?
[00:18:04] I think there's for whatever reason I think people the Holy Spirit is less clearly articulated in Scripture as God.
[00:18:15] Although if you read Basil's work on the Holy Spirit he sort of brings, he pummels you with scriptural passages and evidence.
[00:18:21] There's no way you can read that.
[00:18:23] I think honestly read that and honestly take Scripture seriously and come away thinking the Holy Spirit isn't fully God.
[00:18:30] But I think that it is less in your face in the Bible that the Holy Spirit is fully God the way Jesus is fully God.
[00:18:39] And so a lot of people we would say out of a fear of idolatry or trytheism you don't want to act on the end of worshiping an angel.
[00:18:48] You only want to worship the real God and so then they rejected the full divinity of the Holy Spirit.
[00:18:53] Now that these parties like the Arians and then also the people who are denying the deity of the Holy Spirit are they recognizing we are deviating from sort of the established idea?
[00:19:04] Because I think oftentimes people think the early church is a wild wild west.
[00:19:08] There wasn't really Trinitarian theology that was something that developed later.
[00:19:12] Did they have a sense that they were going against something or did they go, no it's open.
[00:19:19] We're just trying to figure it out and this is what we figured out.
[00:19:21] They believe that they represent the best of the tradition.
[00:19:26] So no one thinks it's the wild west back then.
[00:19:29] Both these groups coming out of some other theological crises in the third century, all of these people are opposed to these third century guys.
[00:19:40] And each group thinks that they are bringing forward the best response to the current concerns but they think they're doing so within the boundaries of tradition as it has been written.
[00:19:51] So that's what's going on.
[00:19:55] And on some questions the Aryan question I think is like the best reading of where people from Justin, Martyr onwards are going ends up Nicea.
[00:20:06] If you think of what Justin and his teaching about the Logos, what it means and the ramifications of Irenaeus and his teaching on the incarnation of the word as well as the teaching of origin who's comes down to us in a weird way.
[00:20:20] But all three of these sort of heavy hitting, anti-Nicene theologians.
[00:20:25] I think that the best fulfillment of their teaching is found in the Orthodox side which I suppose you would say I would say that because I agree with the Orthodox side in the debate but that I think it's true.
[00:20:37] So Aries would say, you know, Aries if he had a time machine and he went back and he talked to Justin Martyr or if he talked to Irenaeus and he would explain his views.
[00:20:47] That's not what I'm talking about.
[00:20:50] Is that kind of the idea that and the Orthodox would be like we went a time machine and we explained it but yeah, yeah, that's what I mean.
[00:20:56] Yeah, I think so.
[00:20:57] Like if you were to give them say the explanation of what Homo Uzias, that word, the consubstantial word, if you give them Aethanasius explanation of that word too especially Irenaeus.
[00:21:07] Irenaeus would say, yeah that is, I see what you're saying.
[00:21:11] If you explain it properly in Aethanation terms, I think you would be in agreement.
[00:21:14] There is actually a clear development.
[00:21:17] Clear development is the wrong word because people misuse it but there's a clear connection between the teaching of Irenaeus and the teaching of Aethanasius and Irenaeus himself to the Apostles.
[00:21:26] So I think you can see that the freight of the majority of Christian tradition out of Scripture is found in the Nicene group.
[00:21:36] So we fast forward about half a century, about 50 years to 431 and here we've got the Council of Ephesus.
[00:21:46] So this is Theodosius 2 and what's going on here?
[00:21:50] So we've already established some Christology, Deity of Holy Spirit, now a Council of Ephesus.
[00:21:55] What are they trying to crack down on here?
[00:21:57] So the Council of Ephesus comes because in 428 there's a recently appointed bishop of Constantinople, a gentleman named Historius.
[00:22:07] And Historius has started saying things that it is really difficult for me and a lot of other people to see as saying anything other than that Jesus is two persons.
[00:22:20] There's a divine person of the Logos and a human person of Jesus.
[00:22:24] And I honestly have read the fragments of the story of Historius from this time period and I think that it is a perfectly valid way of reading what he has to say.
[00:22:37] And this is disconcerting to a lot of the people in Constantinople.
[00:22:41] And so someone in Constantinople sends out the worst of Nestorius's sermons to other leading bishops, including most importantly Cyril of Alexandria.
[00:22:53] But also Bishop Celestine in Rome, independent of Cyril, which is important because it means that Celestine rejects Nestorius.
[00:23:02] So it's not just there's a version of this that makes it Cyril some sort of anti-Nestorian bad guy who's just out to get the rival in Constantinople.
[00:23:09] But it's clear that Celestine is also after Nestorius specifically for the doctrinal teaching and Cyril is as well.
[00:23:18] Cyril is the great opponent of Nestorius.
[00:23:21] He has the most articulate views of the age on the questions that Nestorius has sort of provoked about how do you talk about the union of God and man in Jesus Christ?
[00:23:36] And so that's what the council is meant to deal with.
[00:23:39] The thing is a complete shambles, which is what makes it fun.
[00:23:44] So if you're into church history just because it's a fun thing to study, Council of Ephesus 431 is both sad and cool.
[00:23:51] Because there's a whole delegation from the Roman diocese of Orians centered on Antioch who are running late to get to the council.
[00:24:00] And like there's two timelines of when they might be there.
[00:24:04] And if they don't make it by such and such a date, the bishop of Antioch tells Cyril start the council without us.
[00:24:09] Cyril counts it by the earliest possible date in order to start without them.
[00:24:15] And so he starts the council knowing that the people most likely to support Nestorius aren't there yet.
[00:24:22] And the imperial commissioner who's supposed to be like doing the administrative side of things, he's like, well, you know, we're not...
[00:24:31] I'm not doing this because the emperor told me to.
[00:24:33] He's like, well just read out the letter for us anyway.
[00:24:35] So he reads out this letter and Cyril says, well since you read the letter that's officially meant to start the proceedings, the proceedings have been officially started.
[00:24:43] And so then he just runs his council and they summon Nestorius to the council.
[00:24:46] And Nestorius is like, this is the council full of my enemies. I'm not coming.
[00:24:50] Which is kind of logical.
[00:24:52] And then they say, well you've been summoned three times to the council and you've refused to come all three times.
[00:24:57] This is because you're a heretic because if you had nothing to hide you would come.
[00:25:01] And so then without anyone who might be able to support Nestorius in the room, Nestorius gets deposed by this council.
[00:25:08] And while this is going on, John of Antioch and the other bishops, they're often called Easterners which is weird to me because this...
[00:25:16] It has to do with the Roman province naming practices.
[00:25:20] The guys from the Diocese of Orians.
[00:25:22] So calling them orientals which people also used to do is even weirder than calling them Easterners.
[00:25:26] So these guys turn up, they're not Chinese, they're Syrian and they turn up and they're like, well we're not going to Cyril's council.
[00:25:34] That thing's a gong show.
[00:25:36] And so they hold their own council and they depose Cyril at their council.
[00:25:39] And then both councils send the results to the emperor and the emperor's like, I'm deposing all of you guys because you can't do this.
[00:25:47] And then there's a bunch of waiting and bribing and things.
[00:25:51] And eventually after all the waiting and bribing Cyril's council wins out.
[00:25:56] And John of Antioch says, I'm still not accepting this as an ecumenical council when it goes home.
[00:26:00] And there is a schism between Antioch and Alexandria for like two years now.
[00:26:05] Until there's finally they come to a separate agreement that is not a formulation from the council.
[00:26:11] A formula of reunion.
[00:26:13] It's in a letter of Cyril's, the number of which escapes me.
[00:26:16] But it starts with the phrase, let the heavens rejoice according to Psalms.
[00:26:21] The heavens rejoice and the earth be glad because they have found a way of articulating the both the two,
[00:26:28] the fact that there's the two going on, right?
[00:26:31] Of the divine and the human in the one person of Jesus.
[00:26:36] So that sort of the insanity in terms of the back history of what's going on in the council.
[00:26:42] But then if you're a Protestant, you're like, well that just sounds like all the sorts of reasons why we don't like this kind of thing.
[00:26:49] Although it could just be your ordinary general synod in the Anglican Church of Canada. Who knows?
[00:26:55] So you got Nestorius, he's saying two persons.
[00:26:59] There's a divine person, a human person, they're sort of united.
[00:27:04] But the language that comes out of it is, no, it's two natures.
[00:27:09] It's one person.
[00:27:12] So it's one person and it's not officially, they're not quite ready to straight out say two natures yet.
[00:27:20] That's next.
[00:27:21] Well he's not there.
[00:27:23] Yeah, he's not there.
[00:27:24] The story is not there.
[00:27:27] What does he think about?
[00:27:29] Does he end up saying okay fine one person?
[00:27:33] He never likes that.
[00:27:35] His concern, and this is what will take whatever the next century to sort out of how to say this.
[00:27:43] But Nestorius' concern is that when you say one person, the divine logos takes over and the human aspect of Jesus is just a meat sack with the divine person occupying it.
[00:27:54] So he's trying to find a way to safely uphold the two-ness, but the problem with his language and Ciro points this out and Nestorius is like whatever.
[00:28:06] Part of the problem is he says that rather than using words of union, he talks about the conjunction and the word he chooses, synafia,
[00:28:15] is the same word they would use about hitting a wagon to a donkey.
[00:28:19] And Ciro says that's not close enough.
[00:28:21] It needs to be a full henocese, a full complete union.
[00:28:28] And so Ciro's big thing is what we call the hypostatic union or in Greek it's the henocese catechipostisens, so the union according to a hypothesis.
[00:28:38] And what this means is a hypothesis is the same word is a word that is typically used translated into English as person.
[00:28:45] It's the word that is used of the three persons as the Holy Trinity.
[00:28:48] And so what you're saying is there is a single person, a single acting subject, Jesus of Nazareth and he is simultaneously fully God and fully man.
[00:28:58] And what this means is that you can say things that you might say quote properly speaking if we're going to sort of that kind of terminology could only be said of a human like but you can say them of the divine law.
[00:29:14] You can say God the word was crucified and died.
[00:29:18] You can say that because of the hypostatic union that the person who did all these things is God the word.
[00:29:24] It's not God the word with Jesus.
[00:29:28] It is just it is just him and who he is is both of these things at once.
[00:29:33] Ciro doesn't like saying two natures.
[00:29:37] The later tradition finds a way to reconcile Ciro with two natures, but he doesn't like saying two natures because the way the word natures being used to be said.
[00:29:44] The way the word is being used to be said at the time would end up implying two persons, at least the way Ciro understands the word.
[00:29:49] So there's partly some linguistic semantic stuff going on at the same time as the actual theological meat of the arguments.
[00:29:57] So you can say that God died but would that be a you'd have to qualify that regarding his natures?
[00:30:04] You can say that God died and when you say that an ungenerous person would say that you're speaking blasphemy, but an Orthodox should say,
[00:30:16] oh yes, you're talking about the incarnation because Jesus is fully God.
[00:30:19] And really like for the Christian on the street, that's the payout of Ephesus is to be able to say that Jesus is fully God and fully human.
[00:30:28] There's no weird bifurcation that only the human part was crucified.
[00:30:34] That body is the body of the divine word.
[00:30:37] Because I've heard people say like with regard to his divine nature, trying to distinguish like that strictly speaking God doesn't die.
[00:30:44] Well so that's sort of the problem that brings us on to the next council in 451 which is Calcedon because it's a problem being able to talk correctly and maintain the unity
[00:30:57] and not lose the, I like to call it the two nests because there's not duality or dualism is too sharp a distinction.
[00:31:04] I would say for this the line of Cyril but Cyril acknowledges himself actually in some of his writings that you can sort of see in your mind that obviously
[00:31:15] it is a human body that is crucified and obviously it is the divine person who raises himself from the dead.
[00:31:21] Right. Like you can see that there is a divine nature and human nature at work but he refuses to divide the operations of the divine and human nature from one another if that makes sense.
[00:31:34] But this question sort of left, it's not satisfactorily answered well depending whom you ask it may never have been.
[00:31:41] Right. So then that takes us 20 years further on from 431 to 451 with the council of Calcedon, that's what you were mentioning, Emperor Marcian holds it and now they're trying to tie up loose ends I guess from Ephesus.
[00:31:58] Is that right? On how to speak about the incarnation?
[00:32:02] Yeah, because basically there's this guy called Utikis, he's one of these head honcho monks in Constantinople and he says the effect of what he says is that the human nature basically exists only on paper if you will.
[00:32:18] That it is completely swallowed up by the divine in everything that Jesus does and it's just he's basically his version of the hypostatic union is that it's a meat sack inhabited by a divine person.
[00:32:33] So it's a single nature in that nature is basically ends up being all divine all the time.
[00:32:38] And so Leo Bishop of Rome says well that's definitely a bad idea and the Bishop of Constantinople Flavian already deposed Utikis over it.
[00:32:48] And so we'll make the long story short because it's a big there's a lot that goes on to bring you to the council, but the council is there to deal with that issue.
[00:32:57] But also at the same time to try to affirm serals, the oneness of the person of Christ as articulated by Cyril at Ephesus, but also the two natures as articulated by Leo in the tone.
[00:33:09] This is a can be a difficult thing to do.
[00:33:14] And there are some people who think that they exist to this day who think that the council failed.
[00:33:21] So the council I should have pulled up the dog dogmatic definition of Calcedon, but it talks about how there is basically there are two natures in a single person.
[00:33:30] And they are without confusion, but without division.
[00:33:35] And this is this whole list of things of negatives basically saying, you know, they're not confused and mingled like Utikis where it basically define takes over, but they're not divided like Nestorius.
[00:33:45] It's basically this attempt to hold all these realities in tension to say he is fully God and fully man at the same time.
[00:33:54] And the reason they use natures as a language Leo the Great uses a variety of different words depending who he's talking to to articulate this idea.
[00:34:02] He prefers form because that's from Philippians.
[00:34:06] Philippians two five to 11 where it talks about he did not.
[00:34:11] He took on the form of slave, even though he had the form of God right that verse that passage in scripture there so that's Leo's preferred theological term is actually for my not in that Europe, but nature is already the sort of established word.
[00:34:24] People are using and the reason people like Leo want to continue using two natures is because if you just say he has two natures that means all the things that it means to be human.
[00:34:34] He has and all the things that means to be divine.
[00:34:36] He has each in its fullness.
[00:34:40] And so you want to be able to say he has a human soul.
[00:34:42] He has a human will.
[00:34:44] He has human flesh.
[00:34:45] He has a human spirit.
[00:34:47] All of these things, all of the properties that are part of the essence of humanity are can cast you by the word human nature.
[00:34:54] But then also all of the things that means to be divine.
[00:34:57] He also possesses and that's encapsulated by the idea of divine nature.
[00:35:01] There's two kinds of things happening here and it works really well in a Latin situation.
[00:35:07] But anyway, it doesn't always work for Greek thinkers.
[00:35:11] It works for some of them.
[00:35:13] Works for the majority of the bishops who are at Kelsey.
[00:35:15] In fact, doesn't work for the Egyptian delegation.
[00:35:18] They actually say if they sign off on the thing, they'll get beaten up when they go back home.
[00:35:21] So they refuse.
[00:35:24] I think they actually said they feared for their lives, but that might be hyperbole.
[00:35:28] Then again, people do get killed by mobs and Alexandria from time to time over religion.
[00:35:34] So the result of this...
[00:35:35] Okay, so as you were saying, so the result of this then is that the church of the Roman Empire
[00:35:42] ends up embracing this single person with two natures idea at the Council of Calcedon.
[00:35:50] But the seeds of schism are sown because they depose Diascorus, who is the successor of Cyril and Alexandria.
[00:36:02] But the Egyptian delegation never sign off on it.
[00:36:05] A bunch of guys from the Balkans don't sign off on it either.
[00:36:10] And there are a bunch of other people like monks in Jerusalem who don't like it
[00:36:15] and they take over the city for a while and don't let the bishop back in.
[00:36:18] And just a variety of people throughout the Eastern church who reject the speaking of two natures in the Council of Calcedon.
[00:36:28] Which sows the seeds for what exists today in the Coptic Orthodox Church,
[00:36:33] the Ethiopian Orthodox to Ahedo Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Syrian Orthodox Church.
[00:36:39] All of those churches at one stage or another rejected the Council of Calcedon
[00:36:45] and said that they are historically used to be called Monophysite.
[00:36:49] We tend to say Miaphysite today for them.
[00:36:53] They believe there is just one incarnate nature of God the Word.
[00:36:59] And that's their main thing.
[00:37:01] But they would say that that one incarnate nature encompasses all of the essence of what it means to be human.
[00:37:08] But they believe that if there are two natures, since a nature can't exist without a concrete expression,
[00:37:15] they would argue that two natures means there are two persons as the concrete expression that each nature needs to have its own.
[00:37:21] So it can only be one nature.
[00:37:22] So it's clear there is a different use of nature going on in the two camps.
[00:37:26] And basically the great exponent of that theology in the decades of fallows,
[00:37:31] Severus of Antioch, brilliant theologian.
[00:37:34] I think he has some willfully maleficent readings of Leo in his letters.
[00:37:40] He gets deposed in 518.
[00:37:43] But before his deposition, and after his deposition, he's sort of like this,
[00:37:46] this leader of the people who reject the Imperial Church.
[00:37:50] He basically says these guys are either heretics like Nestorius
[00:37:53] or they're just incoherent and don't know what they're saying.
[00:37:56] Those are basically his position on the Council of Calcedon.
[00:37:59] How does this change our language today?
[00:38:01] I mean, like you were saying that you can say God was crucified.
[00:38:05] I mean, I think the scriptures say as much, but then you also,
[00:38:08] if everything that is true of divinity is true of Christ,
[00:38:12] what happens when, what is true of humanity and what is true of divinity?
[00:38:18] How do you speak about them without it seeming like they're contradicting each other?
[00:38:23] So that's, you sort of, you have to keep the one in your mind
[00:38:29] if you're talking about the other, I guess you could say so.
[00:38:31] You could say for example, the man Jesus Christ raised himself from the dead, right?
[00:38:37] Knowing that it is because of his divine nature that the human nature did anything miraculous, right?
[00:38:43] That they're always working together.
[00:38:45] It's sort of, I would say it's like how you can say there are three persons with a single essence.
[00:38:51] But as is the teaching from Athanasius onwards,
[00:38:54] so Athanasius being the great champion of Nicaea,
[00:38:56] we believe in united operations of the divine trinity.
[00:39:00] So God the Father doesn't go off and do one thing and God the Son and Spirit stay home and eat chips, right?
[00:39:05] I mean, besides the fact that God doesn't, like they're always operating together in concert
[00:39:11] and there are various passages in the scripture that illustrate that for us
[00:39:15] in an elegant manner like in Genesis 1, there's a God, you know, God speaks, God the Father,
[00:39:20] you imagine speaks a word and things are created.
[00:39:24] And before he's doing that, the Spirit of the Lord is hovering over the creation.
[00:39:28] And so you have this, these ideas are already there.
[00:39:32] So then the same thing, we have to do the same thing with the person of Christ,
[00:39:34] that everything he does, he's doing as both human and divine, even the miracles are being done by the human Jesus Christ.
[00:39:41] Even if he can do them in virtue of the fact that he's also the divine person of the word.
[00:39:47] So you're saying you could say he's doing it, the man Jesus Christ is doing miracles by virtue of his divinity.
[00:39:56] Right, yeah.
[00:39:57] Something like that.
[00:39:58] But it wouldn't be by virtue of his humanity.
[00:40:00] Right, no, it wouldn't be and that's how you're able to maintain both.
[00:40:04] That's why Kelsey wants to maintain the two natures and see them as two separate things because he isn't.
[00:40:11] His humanity itself doesn't actually perform miracles.
[00:40:14] This is actually part of the argument for the full divinity of Jesus is the fact that he performs miracles and people point out,
[00:40:23] hey, but he performs all the same miracles as the, as the prophets do doesn't he or the apostles.
[00:40:28] But unlike the prophets and the apostles, he doesn't ask God to do the miracles.
[00:40:32] He just does them.
[00:40:34] He commands and things happen.
[00:40:35] He speaks and you are healed.
[00:40:37] Whereas prophets pray and God makes things happen.
[00:40:41] Jesus himself doesn't need to pray because he already is God.
[00:40:46] So Calcedon is dealing with how do you understand the union between the human and divine natures?
[00:40:51] How that works, how we speak about it.
[00:40:53] You go about a century later and now we're at the second Council of Constantinople.
[00:40:57] Yeah.
[00:40:58] Emperor Justinian one.
[00:41:00] He's over that.
[00:41:02] What are they trying to tackle here?
[00:41:04] So this is I believe Council number five.
[00:41:06] Yeah.
[00:41:07] It's basically its main dogmatic thing is what I would call mopping up operations after Calcedon that they want to reconcile the Imperial Church to the emerging Coptic Orthodox Church.
[00:41:19] There's still, basically they're like for a lot of this time there are two separate hierarchies in Egypt that there's a group who is supports the emperor and his policies.
[00:41:29] And then there's also a group that rejects him that says no, we're separate in those good back.
[00:41:34] This other group and a few other bishops around who are on track to becoming the Miathasite movement that exists today.
[00:41:43] The Imperial Church wants them back.
[00:41:45] They want to have one big United Church again.
[00:41:48] And so the emperor Justinian he to appease them produces doctrinal statements that are, I mean they're actually the theological content of them is solid and good.
[00:42:04] And it's like church politics starts getting in the way though because one of the things he does in the midst of them is he anathematizes the work and writings of Theodore of Mops Westia which no one has problem with.
[00:42:14] He's basically the pre-nistorius, which may get me crucified for saying that on air by his modern day supporters who are trying to rehabilitate him but I don't think he's orthodox.
[00:42:29] So reject the person in teaching of Theodore of Mops Westia.
[00:42:33] Reject certain teachings of Theodore of Cyrus.
[00:42:36] Theodore was a guy who got deposed by another council in 448.
[00:42:39] He was reinstated as orthodox at Calcedon, but certain of his works are rejected by Justinian.
[00:42:46] He says look we're not rejecting all of the other it but these things he wrote.
[00:42:50] They're too contrary to Cyril to count as orthodox.
[00:42:55] They're too close to the story.
[00:42:57] So even if we were to say that the man himself at the time of death dies in the piece of church and we're fine with that.
[00:43:02] Some of the things he wrote, we can't embrace.
[00:43:06] And then the other one is a man named Ibasa Videsa who also got deposed in 448.
[00:43:11] And he wrote this letter and it's one of the most historian things you're ever going to read.
[00:43:19] And so he says he can't do that either.
[00:43:20] And the problem with Theodore and Ibasa is the fact that one of the things that they did at the Council of Calcedon was overturned the Council of Ephesies of 448.
[00:43:30] Because the Council of Ephesies in 448 embraced Utikis and said hey Utikis is good to go and ignored Leo altogether which Leo got really angry about.
[00:43:41] And so he's sort of thinking oh well what are we going to do if you start undoing what a previous ecumenical council had done by rejecting certain teachings of Theodore.
[00:43:52] Postumously anathematizing this guy Ibasa are you therefore backpedaling on Calcedon.
[00:43:57] Are you putting the dogmatic definitions that we worked so hard for.
[00:44:00] Are you putting them at risk.
[00:44:03] And I mean the long-term answer to that is no.
[00:44:05] But the church politics in the short term answer for a whole bunch of people in Italy is, Italy and North Africa is actually yes you are undoing Calcedon.
[00:44:16] And so then it fails.
[00:44:19] It's disappointing because it doesn't do enough to appease the theological concerns of people like Severus of Antioch and sort of the group of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
[00:44:31] It doesn't really appease the people who like Severus' theology at this point.
[00:44:34] And it ends up creating a schism in northern Italy that Milan and sort of that whole region sort of venices the new city that's in Aquileia is this old one.
[00:44:47] Let's be looking at an imaginary map of Italy as I look up so that those people end up in schism with the Bishop of Rome and the Imperial Church who support this council.
[00:44:57] But its statements are further clarification of how you can speak about the singleness of the person of Christ through the sort of dogmatic decrees of the Emperor Justinian drawing on the theology of a guy called the Antiochus of Byzantium.
[00:45:10] So that's what's going on there.
[00:45:11] So they're trying to get the people who broke off from Calcedon, right?
[00:45:19] They broke off and they're trying to say, well can we figure out language that you can accept so we can come back together and it doesn't work?
[00:45:26] It doesn't work. No. And it doesn't work. There's like you could list all the reasons why this isn't going to work.
[00:45:31] But one of them is to keep everybody happy. It's been so many decades.
[00:45:38] There are people who each side considers a heretic that the other embraces.
[00:45:42] And so you can't have people who think that Severus of Antiochus is a heretic.
[00:45:49] Don't want to be in communion with people who think he's a saint.
[00:45:52] And so that's also part of it.
[00:45:53] Even if you were to find suitable language, which in the 1990s they claimed they did, find suitable language everyone could embrace, they have this history problem now because it was sort of in terms of history it's too late.
[00:46:07] Of course there are all sorts of things if you read modern Coptic Orthodox and Syrian Orthodox writers.
[00:46:13] They'll come up with all sorts of other reasons why it wouldn't work.
[00:46:16] But even if they were to accept Justinian overtures in terms of theology and language, they do have the history problem that the Bishop of Romans never going to say, yay Severus of Antioch who thinks that my predecessor is a heretic.
[00:46:30] Of course he's a saint. This is never going to happen for these people to be actually all part of one big happy church. History becomes the issue.
[00:46:39] What's going on with origin at the Second Council of Constantinople?
[00:46:44] So there is a, what we call, the part of the council that's more famous for most people is the origin part.
[00:46:51] And this is not formally part of the acts of the council. It's kind of interesting, but it's the bishops of the council meeting together in a separate session.
[00:46:59] So it's a good question. This is not therefore confirmed or enforced as being an ecumenical decision, but it has the support of all the same people as the ecumenical decision.
[00:47:11] So that's one thing to note. And the only reason I note that is because people will hammer that home today because this is like the only time an ecumenical council formally rejects universalism.
[00:47:24] Now origin was an early church father and from way back when and now they're reviewing his works and saying, what do we think about his universalist views?
[00:47:36] Yeah, that's like the main thing that they're doing in terms of origin here. There's the universalist views and a bunch of other things attributed to people who are called originists.
[00:47:47] And it seems that this sort of arose in the monasteries of the Judean desert and sort of Palestine Monastery of Marsaba, which is still there today is one of the hotbeds of this controversy where some monks are reading origin and one of the followers of origin, this guy called a vagrius who I believe I might have talked about in the
[00:48:10] podcast before.
[00:48:11] Yeah, right. So they're reading him and but they're reading like the weird bits, I guess so you're not reading what how to attain purity of heart, right? You're reading about stars having souls and stuff like that.
[00:48:25] And the basically some of the monks are like, whoa, stars don't have souls. And they're like, do you guys also believe that everyone's going to be saved up?
[00:48:35] I don't think that's true either. And so then they like bring a petition to the emperor to deal with this and so then since they're getting together for council anyway, this is what this this is what they are dealing with.
[00:48:46] And it's interesting. It's hard to know of the origin ism, how much of it is is like traceable to origin himself because this most controversial work only survives in the Latin translation that was put together by someone who thought he was orthodox.
[00:49:04] So you're like, okay, so like all of the negative quotes are from enemies in Greek and the original Greek is lost. And so how much of this is really origin and same thing with the vagrius stuff. The vagrius is even worse because of aggressive most controversial work is like it's a, it's a series of short little
[00:49:24] pity sayings. And you want to talk about easy to interpolate, we'll just toss anything we want in there. And it only survives in Syriac doesn't survive any original Greek either. Both of them suffer because of this council so for us today to be able to evaluate the so
[00:49:39] called origin ism of the sixth century is actually really hard, because we don't actually have access to the primary sources of the controversial theologians.
[00:49:49] Was universalism a widespread tradition. I mean, I know some of the thing that I've heard that some of the Capitanian fathers were universalist leaning at least so the short answer is no.
[00:50:03] It wasn't really that widespread a teaching.
[00:50:09] It's an even Gregory of Nissa depends. So there is definitely a passage that I don't see you. I can't remember where it is, but that I don't see anything other than an or universalist reading being acceptable of what he says there.
[00:50:23] So that's one thing to note. So it is there in Gregory of Nissa, but he has other places that don't seem to support a universalist reading. So I don't think it's that widespread, but the interpretation of what I'm saying hinges upon the same word that the interpretation of the Bible passages that
[00:50:42] universalists contest as well. So that's the hard part is that the question of when Jesus talks about internal damnation, right, people cast into Gehenna and it's Ionian or Ioni also Greek.
[00:50:57] Does that mean everlasting or is it just for an age and the universalist try to argue it's just for an age and therefore every time it comes up in the Greek fathers they say oh no it's not talking about eternal hell fire it's talking about temporal hell fire so
[00:51:10] I'm still on the side that it is a minority position. I'm willing to accept that it exists in people like certain passages of great Nissa, Isaac the Syrian in the 600s, but I'm not willing to say that.
[00:51:24] But it's because I interpret the Bible passage in a way different from them. I suppose if I interpreted the Bible the same way universalist does then I would interpret the Greek fathers the same way they do.
[00:51:34] So if we go a century later, so we're at Second Council of Constantinople 553. Now we're at number six, which is the third Council of Constantinople and that is in 680 to 681.
[00:51:49] Constantinople is over that one. What are they fighting about here?
[00:51:54] So people keep on trying to repair the schism that emerged after Calcedon and so one of the attempts was the emperor Heraclius decides what I'm going to do is I'm just going to say hey whatever about the natures there's only one will.
[00:52:12] And so that's so it's called monothelite. So there's only one will and at first glance it's actually, yeah sure why not? But Maximus the Confessor of Monk says I don't think that works because in order for the human nature to be full it needs to have its own will.
[00:52:32] And so he relentlessly campaigns against this ends up getting his tongue in his hand cut off sent into exile and dies.
[00:52:42] But he is the great exponent of how it is that we can still say there are these two natures and they come together in the mystery of the ages which is the hypostatic union that Cyril talks about.
[00:52:56] So he brings together Calcedon and Cyril in sort of this beautiful glorious theology.
[00:53:02] And he says we have to say there are two wills and he talks about how the Garden of Gethsemane is an example of this that Christ in the garden, I think it's a Pusculum 6,
[00:53:13] it's going to be one of the readings in the course of mind that Brian is doing the video editing for that he comes in the garden and he actually says not my will but thine will be done,
[00:53:24] but you're like well but the divine will of Jesus would never be afraid of dying.
[00:53:28] You know what though fear is a perfectly natural non sinful response of a human and a human will would not want to and a human will would choose to submit to the divine will if it's a perfect human.
[00:53:42] So what's going on there is we can see that his human will is choosing to be obedient to the divine will of the Father in that way.
[00:53:54] And so that's basically what he's bringing forth is we need to continue to affirm this beautiful mystery of divine and human coming together in the person of Jesus Christ and without compromise in either direction.
[00:54:09] Do not compromise the humanity one iota do not compromise the divinity either and that's what's going on at the Council of Constantinople which of course is done well after he's dead.
[00:54:23] But it's there and I think it's I think the teaching of Maximus is beautiful because it brings together so many of the things that people have been fighting for for like 200 years at this point.
[00:54:32] Well you can see how conflict actually helps bring clarity.
[00:54:35] You know they formulated some way people find that they can't really hold to this or it's almost like the historical process as messy as it is.
[00:54:45] It actually has this sort of purifying effect over time because people are having to be more precise with language.
[00:54:51] They're thinking about two natures and then what that means for the will and it is you do see a lot of they're trying to make sense of the biblical data.
[00:54:59] They're not just sort of pontificating on basic things they see Jesus submitting.
[00:55:06] They see him having a human will but they also know that there must be a divine will and they're trying to make sense of it all so it does seem like scriptures very much a compass for them as they're trying to hash these things out.
[00:55:17] Is that is that fair to say.
[00:55:18] That's actually one of the things when I give my lectures to students that I tried to hammer home is how much of what the teaching of the ancient fathers is based on scripture.
[00:55:28] And even when we're getting into some nitty-gritty philosophical language like people like Maximus and Aethnaceous do, the reason why they're using this language is actually something that John Calvin pointed out.
[00:55:39] We're fighting about what scripture means so sometimes we need to take a step outside of scripture find a different word figure what that word means.
[00:55:47] So that we can together come to see what scripture means because if we're too busy fighting over what a single passage of the Bible means where we're like the whole universalism thing if we're all arguing what does it mean Ioni us and we have mutually conflicting definitions of that word.
[00:56:00] Is there some other word where we could win over the universalists to the orthodox position right that sort of question.
[00:56:06] And so then that's why we have all of this philosophical language is precisely how can we safely articulate what are the truths of sacred scripture revealed to us by God.
[00:56:16] So third council concepts and oval they're trying to define that there's two wills is there's Jesus is human will divine will in the one person.
[00:56:24] Now we get to our seventh council, the second council of Nicaea.
[00:56:28] So up into this point, I mean you have the after Calcedon you have the Egyptian Coptic churches splitting off things like that.
[00:56:37] But number seven, the seventh council this is a big deal because there's this kind of signals after this the great traditions you know East North Orthodox Roman Catholic they seem to diverge.
[00:56:52] Is that is that fair to say. Yeah they've sort of you could argue I mean I'm not always a big fan of doing this kind of thing but you could argue that as early as some of what's going on around Calcedon you can see the seeds of
[00:57:06] of what's to come because they're starting to not understand each other anymore.
[00:57:11] And that gets bigger and bigger and so by 787
[00:57:17] like they're just black like no Greece no Latin no Latin is no Greek right so it's like
[00:57:23] the two traditions are starting to diverge more and more because they aren't I mean they're in separate political spheres for one thing.
[00:57:29] They're facing separate different they're even facing different theological challenges right the east is the council is called because the east is having a big fight over icons.
[00:57:38] And the west is busy dealing with actually completely separate theological issue about adoptionism and yet we don't get when we have councils that deal with it but none of them can claims to be an ecumenical one.
[00:57:49] They're even called by Charlemagne who will later on call himself an emperor.
[00:57:54] But they're not claiming ecumenical status the way the big council of the east to do.
[00:57:59] So this is the last kind of united ecumenical council universal council and you say 787 Constantine for an Empress Irene because our Constantine six came I run new most messed up and on Wikipedia the great source of all knowledge is it says iconoclasm and you mentioned that there was a debate in the east over
[00:58:24] icons what what's how would you summarize that little controversy so the tiny little controversy is the tiny one so emperor Leo the third now I'm losing all my dates but and for Leo the third says you can't make images anymore.
[00:58:37] Of Christ in the saints and if you and you cannot like bow down or kiss any of them or anything like that.
[00:58:44] And so he basically starts off and of course when an emperor does the sort of thing you do a big show you like smash mosaics in Constantinople you like you know chip away frescoes paint over frescoes left right and center you take down anything.
[00:58:57] The only thing left you're allowed to have up is like a bear cross if that.
[00:59:02] And so he does this and he deposes the bishop of Constantinople over it and the great defender of icons.
[00:59:10] John of Damascus says well so here's the thing the argument is not saying this gets presbyterian but like the argument is that it's a second commandment violation right though shall not make unto myself an idol or any grave and image and bow down onto it and all these things and
[00:59:28] John of Damascus says you know what that would be great if God hadn't become a carnate as a person because the argument that Moses gives for the second commandment is that when the elders of Israel went out and there was the lightning and flashing on the mountain you didn't see a person.
[00:59:43] You didn't see a body so you can't make an image of God because no one has seen him well guess what says John we know God was a man.
[00:59:51] He was Jesus so you can make a picture of Jesus.
[00:59:54] This should be allowable because it is embracing the fullness of the incarnation to say I can make an image of Christ.
[01:00:01] So that's his main argument that I find compelling enough to let me keep up my icons of Jesus.
[01:00:07] The one the aspect of the council and so that dog mat that dogmatic piece of the council is something that I personally am comfortable embracing.
[01:00:17] Not all Protestants are so I can always my presbyterian brothers and sisters out there.
[01:00:21] I used to go to a presbyterian church but there's also the council also however at the same time says not only this you should be kissing them and and you know perform proskinesis to them.
[01:00:35] And so John of Damascus again is like Maximus dead by the time of the council but the council affirms his teaching.
[01:00:43] His argument is there are different forms of giving honor to something and so there's one form of honor which is Latria which we get idolatry idolatria which you can which is suitable only to God.
[01:00:59] But then proskinesis is a primarily physical action that you do to anything you consider or anyone you consider honorable and he gives instances in scripture where people do bow it's primarily a bowing action.
[01:01:09] Where people do bow to other humans they bow to angels they do all sorts of things and so then this should be acceptable and allowable.
[01:01:18] And we're still like yeah but it's not like it's one thing to be like therefore you can bow to the emperor right.
[01:01:23] I think everyone would be willing to say that there's a moment in time where you can do that.
[01:01:28] I mean there are actually a lot of ancient christians who were like no you can't even bow to the emperor but by this point emperors are christian and sort of christians have taken on all that imperial stuff.
[01:01:41] But it's still an image and so what the argument that is made is one that I think we had a lot harder time maybe easier for Canadians because we have the king set on our coins.
[01:01:50] But the honor that you give to the image is passed on to the archetype.
[01:01:57] And so if you are if you kiss an icon of Jesus physically you're just you're kissing a painted piece of wood.
[01:02:07] But in your heart you're kissing God the word incarnate.
[01:02:11] That the honor you give to the piece of wood that is painted passes on to the archetype obviously most products are Protestants are not going to be comfortable with that.
[01:02:19] That's the this is the one council if you were to say can Protestants accept the seven acumenical councils I would say some of us go for the seven council.
[01:02:28] Probably most people don't.
[01:02:30] I hope that you could be I hope that people could be persuaded by John of Damascus to go at least making images of Jesus allowable.
[01:02:39] I personally think the question of kissing an icon.
[01:02:44] It's not it's probably not allowed by the Articles of Religion.
[01:02:48] There are some people who are still trying to argue with is there was a piece in that fontes that I wrote that said some people might be okay with it and then Steve and Wedgworth published a rebuttal later on saying no the Articles of Religion of the
[01:03:01] Church do not allow you to venerate icons even if they let you paint them.
[01:03:07] But I hope you can at least people can at least accept the reason ability of making images of Christ not being idolatry even if you don't want to kiss it.
[01:03:15] But I think the question of kissing is ultimately Adiafara but that there's actually no someone who had an Orthodox priest who said if you think you are starting to worship it get rid of it.
[01:03:28] Which I think you probably get in trouble with in a lot of circles but it's a big world.
[01:03:35] So but so long because the problem with the kissing and the Latin Church has never been fully comfortable with this part of the seventh Council because the problem with bowing down and kissing them is how easy it is for your heart to rather than honor the archetype.
[01:03:50] You do end up idolizing the type that's right in front of you.
[01:03:57] Right. You end up worshiping the image even if you have no intention there.
[01:04:02] And so this is something that Charlemagne and his guys do but these when you say that Charlemagne and his guys aren't big fans of the Council they still embrace it.
[01:04:12] And they're still putting Mosaic's all over stuff.
[01:04:14] Mosaics of angels pictures of Jesus are all the place in his empire.
[01:04:18] So it's not as though they're iconoclasts.
[01:04:20] They represent what I think is the majority Western position which is just sort of like a less comfortable with veneration of icons basically.
[01:04:30] And is that today the Western like Roman Catholics are there because when you think about icons you think more about the Eastern Orthodox but I guess would it be that Roman Catholics are fine with the images but not so much the practices surrounding them.
[01:04:43] Yeah. So formally the Roman Catholic Church would be fine with the veneration of images but it is not as commonly practiced amongst them and there are even groups like sister shins who at their founding like rejected images.
[01:04:59] Not necessarily in a theological sense as iconoclasts but just in terms of a personal devotion thing they aren't embellishing their buildings they're not putting up frescoes they're not doing all these things in the 1100s.
[01:05:12] So there's really two aspects of whether you can make an image of Christ and then what you do with that image.
[01:05:17] Exactly.
[01:05:18] And what would you say after the second Nicaea what is the verdict would be images are okay and the veneration practices are okay?
[01:05:30] Yes, I mean that's what the council concludes.
[01:05:33] Well that was quite the tour of history.
[01:05:36] I know we couldn't go in depth in all of them.
[01:05:37] I mean it's almost comical.
[01:05:39] It's like 10 minutes to discuss the two wills of Christ and the two natures and all that stuff but I mean this might be dizzying for some of our listeners hearing all these things maybe for the first time.
[01:05:52] What can Protestants learn?
[01:05:54] You know you're in an English tradition which is more maybe a more aware of church history broadly I don't know.
[01:06:04] But what can but you're still in the Protestant camp you're still one of us right?
[01:06:08] What can Protestants in general learn?
[01:06:11] I think that from these councils we get a few different options that can really help us and one of them that I find as I read sort of the great theologians of each council so say you read 8th and 8th is sort of understanding Nicaea and then you read the great even as he ends is to understand Constantinople and 381 and so forth so on and so forth.
[01:06:32] So I think that what we should be able to do is read 0 and Leo and these guys is my ability to understand who God is and what he has done for us increases which only which when when it truly does when you truly understand theology better.
[01:06:51] Your love for God increases and your desire to worship him also increases.
[01:06:56] I'm not saying that therefore you need to have an intellectual understanding but if you're the sort of person who thinks theologically and philosophically the better you are at it the better you become at worshiping.
[01:07:06] So that's that's sort of one of the things it's also a means for us as Protestants to not be rootless like everyone's well some sort of weird there have been I spent too much time on Twitter these weird things arise every once in a while that I honestly think if we understood the history of the councils better we'd be like no we don't need to deal with this.
[01:07:23] You know like someone dealt with it 1400 years ago we have other fish to fry today we don't need to revisit you don't need to revisit every single theological question in everyone's life.
[01:07:33] Right.
[01:07:35] I'm not saying blindly except everything tradition has to you on the Protestant right I am saying though understanding them better.
[01:07:41] I think it makes you able to rest more in peace and say look someone's already done this the legwork for me to be able to embrace these doctrines.
[01:07:48] And then you can go out and do some other really cool stuff if you think about some of the great gains in terms of theological thought either of scholasticism or of the reformers it is partly because of the work of the councils that they were able to step forward and start doing other things that you're not spending your whole life proving the divinity of Christ away at the nations had to.
[01:08:08] He was good at it but there are questions that I feel like he could have spent more time on but he just had every time he turns around he has to write another treaties explain why Jesus is gone.
[01:08:17] So with nice see it too I mean that's an interesting one because it seems like the reformers everyone can go yes yes yes all the way up to council number six and then seven.
[01:08:26] I mean the reformers like we just don't like that one I mean how do you be how do you attach your roots.
[01:08:35] Maybe I would just like can a Protestant tradition today how would they claim these roots while going number seven asterix I mean maybe just like that.
[01:08:47] That is that's the hard question isn't it.
[01:08:51] I think you're just going to have to say we are trying to think of how how do because I think the way we as Protestants engage with tradition is a bit different from say Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox that they sort of have tradition that sort of comes comes along and you have to appropriate for each generation anyway but for us.
[01:09:11] I would say we today do it both as within our own tradition right as well as submitting everything to scripture so just as we don't have to do the leg we're gone arguing for the divinity of Christ if you are of a say presbyterian persuasion.
[01:09:28] Get to know Calvin and say look you know we don't simply accept councils because a bunch of bishops sat together and voted on them.
[01:09:35] So we carefully and through our prayerful reading of scripture and you know perhaps the arguments of some of the people from the reign of Charlemagne against generation of images have to say that we cannot fully embrace this council.
[01:09:52] It's sort of yeah.
[01:09:54] I guess I think that's the best you could do for the 7th council unless you do want to start kissing icons and kissing icons doesn't undermine justification by faith or soul of scripture unless you think it countered scripture.
[01:10:09] So you know if you want to if you want to be that kind of Protestant.
[01:10:12] Well it is kind of interesting.
[01:10:14] I mean you're talking about how you know issues of justification.
[01:10:20] I mean so many of these debates are there about scripture but they're brought about by political social all these kinds of things that are sort of pressing these issues and justifications like that's you know they were able to the reforms are able to talk about justification because they weren't having to hammer out Christology and all these types of things.
[01:10:42] And what do you think about the future I mean I don't think we could have an ecumenical council again I mean things are so fragmented.
[01:10:51] But it's funny it's actually sobering because you think oh man if only you have a council and you look at these councils and you're like they help some things but didn't fix everything you know I mean it was these were all messy and so we don't have a romanticized view of the past but how does this inform the future.
[01:11:05] You think of just Christianity in general as we look back on these creeds what do you think future wise this can inform us.
[01:11:13] I think one of the things future wise this can inform us for is both the radical commitment to clear clear teaching for one thing scriptural rootedness.
[01:11:24] If you get like if you read Aethnaceous his works called Contra Arianos against the Arians they're like there's a lot of exegesis that it goes on there it's not just philosophy right.
[01:11:33] And then also though the history of the council shows getting together and working with one another like finding the your fellow orthodox and coming together and talking one of the great moments for the nice scene controversy in the four hundreds is when.
[01:11:52] The guys who say home or use the US which means of a similar nature and the guys they homo use us a bunch of them realize that they're actually using those words in the same way.
[01:12:02] That there's a group of guys who say of a similar nature what I mean by it is the same thing that Aethnaceous means by of the same nature but they were avoiding of Aethnaceous this term for a variety of other reasons and so they were able to through dialogue and conversation find out that what matters isn't the word what matters is what the word means.
[01:12:19] And so they were able to come together and unite together.
[01:12:23] Another thing that happens in the 360s is Basil the great starts a huge letter writing campaign basically he makes becomes pen pals was like every major bishop can get his hands on.
[01:12:35] And that again is something that we could be doing in our own digital age as well as maintaining networks like the Davenin Institute with our army of friends right maintaining networks of orthodox people to talk with and to talk through the important issues of the age just like bishops meeting in council and writing these letters together.
[01:12:54] So there's a lot of food for thought that you've given us and I'm kind of curious, you know, you love church history. You know, you know about these creeds and councils.
[01:13:02] You understand the parties involved.
[01:13:05] You know oftentimes when people reach her history the creeds the councils they start thinking about well maybe I need to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy maybe I become Roman Catholic.
[01:13:13] What what keeps you Protestant despite knowing all this church history.
[01:13:18] There are sort of two, two main things within my own tradition of the Anclerty Church that keep me there.
[01:13:25] One is the teaching of justification by faith alone as articulated by Richard Hooker and his learned to just to keep learned a discourse on justification recently modernized by Brad Little John for Davenin,
[01:13:36] As well as the Book of Common Prayer and its beautiful liturgy that is part of that tradition.
[01:13:40] But the other big thing is sort of comes from the other traditions that there are lots of positive things that I like and are attractive within especially Eastern Orthodoxy but even Roman Catholicism and the Oriental Orthodox Church.
[01:13:54] But each of those claims to be the one true church outside of which there is no salvation and I can't square that with reality.
[01:14:03] I guess is what I would say that how am I supposed to decide which is the true church of the Apostles.
[01:14:10] Is it the church centered around the Pope in Rome.
[01:14:13] Is it the communion of Orthodox bishops the Orthodox or is it in fact where was it that several of anti-Oth was right all along and I should join the Catholic Orthodox Church.
[01:14:23] How how each of those has these claims to exclusivity that no Protestant church actually makes that the Anclerty Church never as never formally assumed that we're the church.
[01:14:33] We're the only saved Christians were like yeah Lutherans fine Presbyterians fine you can even be a Presbyterian as long as you don't live in England even during our strictest periods of history.
[01:14:43] The English church was like Episcopal Governance is for us but you can still be a you can still have be a valid Christian in Scotland and the Presbyterian except for when we tried to impose a Episcopacy there but that's a different story but like you know what I mean like we're okay that there are people outside of Anglicanism who are full fledged Christians embracing Christ going to salvation.
[01:15:03] That formally speaking according to the doctrines of the Roman Church Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox this is not the case.
[01:15:11] I think they still I mean they say today you know separated brethren ecclesial communities.
[01:15:16] I mean I think they've softened their stance but then you wonder that softening of a stance doesn't seem to have a long historical pedigree it seems like when they meant no salvation outside the church I mean something different than what they mean today.
[01:15:30] Yeah that's what I would say and it's also how do you just even if you were to say okay so they would still think you know I've talked to Orthodox Jews who would be like oh no you as an Anglican you're okay that's fine and I you know I would like most Orthodox to think that.
[01:15:44] But how am I supposed to actually look at the historical pedigree of them as being superior to one another right like who am I to be able to say that the Eastern Orthodox Church was the one who was in the right during the schism or maintains the truth.
[01:15:59] And so I would say that the Christian Church is not the only one who is in the right during the Catholic Church.
[01:16:05] So the fact that Anglicans don't say we are the only real church is easier for me as a Protestant to sort of stay where I am knowing that Christ is present here without not being present in his own way there.
[01:16:20] So you're a Protestant and you are remaining a Protestant even though you've read Church history I guess that's because it's oftentimes you know the charge but you know it's very complicated.
[01:16:34] I mean it's a refreshing thing though to just look through history and be able to go yet.
[01:16:41] It's very complicated but through the province of God you can see these doctrines are hammered out and that there can be a firm foundation for the faith and you know who knows too.
[01:16:53] I mean I also think church history is in static we're still in it right now.
[01:16:58] And who knows what the future could hold so there's a lot of stuff there.
[01:17:02] Matt thank you so much.
[01:17:04] I appreciate you taking us on this tour through church history and explaining some of these councils and creeds.
[01:17:11] I'll put some links to some of your work and then you know once those lectures are out we can let people know about that.
[01:17:18] But Matt I appreciate the time that you've spent with us and thanks for your scholarship in this area.
[01:17:23] Well thank you. Thanks for having me on. It's a great time.
[01:17:27] Thanks for listening to this episode. If you liked it please support the show and consider becoming a Patreon supporter.
[01:17:32] You can find all the links to our YouTube channel and our Instagram account in the show notes.
[01:17:38] Thank you guys for joining us.