Understanding the True Nature of Christ

I'm pretty excited about our subject tonight, which is who is the true Christ? So let's have a word of prayer and then we'll dive in. Lord God, we pray that you will open our eyes to know who Jesus Christ is. Not according to our... attempts to explain the inexplicable, nor our attempts to make Scripture fit our system. But Lord, help us to take and submit our minds and our systems to your Word. Help us to read Scripture with humility and to read it with other Christians, not assuming that somehow we alone have access to the truth about your word. So, Lord, let us learn from our forefathers and our foremothers about who your son, Jesus Christ, is. And as we do so, Lord, I pray that you will help us to worship you, Lord, as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit. In Jesus'name, amen. Amen. So, I've given the PowerPoint to... Chris, and we'll be following that tonight. From first to last, Scripture warns against those who would deny, distort, or diminish the Word of God. Now, mind you, I'm using Word of God often, and context will only tell you, using it with regard to its three biblical meanings. There is the eternal Word who became flesh, that is Jesus Christ. There's the incarnate word, right? Then there is the proclaimed word of God given to the prophets and the apostles, and also repeated today whenever we proclaim that word that was given to the prophets and the apostles. And then there is the written word of God, which is Scripture. And so all three senses have to mean the word of God. And Scripture warns against those who would deny, distort, or diminish the word of God. The serpents'first recorded words distorted God's Word. Just read Genesis chapter 3. He knows how to mess with God's Word. He ends up denying it. Moses warned against adding to or subtracting from the law. So you don't add to the law, you don't subtract from it. Jeremiah repeatedly proclaimed judgment upon prophets pretending to speak for God and upon a king for destroying God's word. Remember when he was taking the word of God and slicing it into pieces and throwing it in the fire? God proclaimed judgment upon him. Jesus, the incarnate word, affirmed the written word is unalterable. not a jot or a tittle shall pass away until the law is fulfilled in its completeness. And Jesus warned that false messiahs, false Christs, and false prophets would seek to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. There's a warning. True Christ, you have false Christ. Yes. Number question. Is salvation and salvation the same thing? I'm sorry? Is election and salvation the same thing? Are they being used synonymously here? Oh, in this passage? Yeah. But that didn't define election for you. I'm listening to you go there. Yeah, we'll do that this semester. His apostles reviewed teachers who misinterpret the eternal word to bring in destructive heresies. And the biblical canon concludes with a reminder that the divine word is returning to judge, and that the word warns against subtracting from or adding to the written word. So you can't add to the word, you can't subtract to it, and the eternal word is coming back bearing a sword of judgment. But don't mess with the word. There's a problem that we have with false Christs. While the Chalcedonian formula, which we provided at the end of the last lecture, captures the basics of true Christology, it is advantageous to see how Orthodox theologians arrived at the dogma of the true Christ. Both before and after Chalcedon, which occurred in 451, many other heresies and errors about Christ have arisen to mislead God's people. The battle to defend the truth teaching about Christ continues to this day. Now identifying false Christs, identifying false Christs helps the churches to recognize and revere the true Christ. The apostles faced this danger, and the early church fathers faced it too. And it would be wise to honor the words of the former and to pay attention to the conclusions of the latter. It is incumbent upon Christians to discern clearly and to speak carefully about the true Christ for four reasons other than the ongoing phenomena of false Christs. And I list those reasons on your PowerPoint. So in the second place, the New Testament is very clear that the only true Christ, that only the true Christ can bring a person into the kingdom of God. There is no salvation available under any other truth in any other name or through any other person. That's why you need to know who the true Christ is. If you're going to be saved, you must come to salvation in him, through him. for his name. This is why understanding the person of Christ is not a secondary but a primary matter. Thirdly, Christians are called to be ambassadors of the true Christ, so we must speak of him boldly. That's what we're called to do. We must also be extraordinarily careful never to distort, and that's the language that Paul uses in Galatians. We must never distort his gospel while proclaiming it. Perverting the gospel of the true Christ brings condemnations upon the proponents of that false gospel. So Christological heresy, bad teaching, heresy and error about Christ must be rebuked, and the true dogma of Jesus Christ must be assiduously, constantly, vehemently maintained it is true in Orthodox Church. This is not a matter for messing around. Just as with the doctrine of the Trinity, we must be careful never to let go of who the true Christ is. And that means getting a handle as best we can from Scripture and in conversation with other believers about who the true Christ is. Fourthly, fallen minds easily change Scripture's presentation of the true Christ by glibly presuming to divine God, by forgetting his deity, his thoughts, and his ways exist beyond our conceptual ability. So read Isaiah chapters 46 and 55, and it becomes very clear that our attempts to explain God tread on error, and we have to be careful. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His deity is beyond our ability to define. The Cyril of Alexandria, the great champion of Christological Orthodoxy, the author of this book that I had you read, or that you're supposed to be reading even now. I hope you brought it tonight. Cyril said that every human attempt fails to capture the mysterious truth of Christ being both God and man. Let me mention this word mystery. Sometimes I hear people refer to mystery and they bring up some type of philosophical conundrum, like a philosophical definition of predestination. And then they appeal when they bring their system to the text and then it doesn't quite fit the text. They'll say, well, that's a mystery. Well, that's not what scripture refers to as the mystery. The mystery. is Jesus Christ. He is the plan of God unfolding in this world. that the eternal word became flesh died on the cross arose from the dead this is the mystery that was beheld that was held back the mystery that has been taken and given to us and so the mystery is christ himself so your philosophy and your inability to force your philosophy into the biblical text is not the mystery the mystery is why you even do that the mystery is about christ That's God's mystery. That's the revealed mystery. That's the mystery we know and we're still trying to get into and understand better so that we can worship Christ fully. So every human attempt to fells that tries to capture the mysterious truth of Christ being both God and man. As Cyril writes these words, the method of these things is altogether ineffable, and there is no mind that can attain to such subtle and transcendent ideas. So instead, we must point with humility and prayer beyond our representations to him alone. So we speak of Christ, and we repeat the words of Christ, and about Christ that we get from Scripture, we try to explain Christ. But at some point we have to say, you know, Him. And it becomes an act of humility. Scripture says that Christ's humanity is like a veil which conceals His deity. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 20. So it would be wise to recognize the limits of our human conceptual abilities. When you speak of Christ, so many people speak of Christ and they only think of his humanity and they often get his humanity wrong and they forget that Christ is God in the flesh and that the flesh veils his humanity, that you do see God in the face of Jesus Christ, but you don't even know what that means. And that calls for humility. And finally, we must worship the true Christ. Recall the contours of the saving gospel of Jesus Christ before you go any further. God the Word took our human nature to himself to perfect it for us. Hebrews chapter 2, verse 10. That's what he's doing with the humanity. He's perfecting it. His incarnation involved neither subtraction nor addition to his divine person, or either would impose change upon the immutable one. Remember Hebrews chapter 13, verse 8, it says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So he doesn't change, and yet he's perfected. Well, how do you bring both of these truths, which are affirmed in the book of Hebrews, together? He doesn't change, yet he suffers. Suffering is change. So how do you bring these truths together? Well, the only way you can do it is through Orthodox Christology. When Christ assumes the human nature, there are people who try to present Christ as somehow losing part of his deity. That's heresy. There are others that assume that Christ in his person has been changed, that the word has been changed by the humanity. No, he assumes it. He's not diminished by the word. He actually elevates the humanity. He took our... or assumed. The Greek word in Philippians chapter 2 verse 7 is labon. It means to assume. He assumed our form and likeness. And Jesus, after assuming our form, our likeness, is henceforward embodied. As man, he is historical. He embraced our history. so that human beings may come to know him. However, as God, he remains eternally above history. So he has always been God. Yet he enters history, right? But at the same time that he is within history in a body, he's still upholding the universe that includes his body. We wouldn't have him in one place. Well, he is in one place, but he's also every place is in him at the same time because he's God. These truths really, they really cause us difficulty. He embraced our history. However, he remains eternally above history. The divine son is unknowable except through his gracious self-revelation in his incarnation. His ineffability, that's another way to say his mysteriousness. His ineffability should prompt us to worship him. And he has made himself known to us. And as such, we must worship him. That's why you need to know who the true Christ is. If you don't worship the true Christ, you are engaged in idolatry. And there is judgment for idolatry. Many errors and heresies in church history occur through diminishing the honor, the worship due to Jesus Christ. glibly presuming he can grasp the totality of what the name of Christ or describe how Christ's identity is constituted. The heretic distorts the truth of his person. Some compromise the irreducible truth that he is God who became and remains man. Others deny that he died and arose from the dead. Others failed to see that even while the nails held him on the cross, he continued to uphold creation. Some compromise his deity. Others his humanity. Yet others his personal unity. One apostle effectively summarizes all their efforts under the rubric of denying Jesus Christ our only Master and Lord. Do you hear what he said? People deny Jesus Christ our only master and Lord. Jesus Christ is a human name, and yet he is our only master and Lord. He is divine. So you deny him by denying either his humanity or his deity, you're already in trouble. And by the way, Jude has some really harsh things to say about these false teachers. Read Jude sometime. He'll scare you. By contrast, the true Orthodox believers affirm the human Jesus of history is the Christ of faith. He is the eternal word of God who became flesh and remains an embodied human being, experiencing for us not only incarnation, but also undergoing death. He then arose from the dead for our justification. then ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he intercedes for believers today. Hebrews chapter 4, verses 14 through 16. So Jesus Christ is one person, both God and man, and his glorious ontology ought never be diminished, distorted, or denied. So our goal in this lecture is to detect the true Christ by rejecting the false Christs. To see the true Christ, we will review the Orthodox consensus about Christ as it developed through the teachings of the early church fathers and became formalized through debates with countless heresies in the early ecumenical councils. So we're going to be looking at early church fathers. We're going to be looking at various heretics, and we're going to be looking at various ecumenical councils. And by being aware of the false Christs that come through the heretics, and how the councils and the fathers responded, we'll... be better placed to understand the true Christ. Well, let's look, first of all, at the logos according to the early church fathers. So this is our outline today, the logos according to the early church fathers, the true Christ and Orthodox thought. Then we'll look at conciliar Christology, and then we'll bring it back to a conclusion. But due to its basis in biblical revelation and its multicultural background, the concept of the logos, whose biblical meaning we reviewed in the last lecture, was attractive to early Christian apologists and theologians. Hans von Hempenhausen said the acceptance of the Greek liturgy or legacy was spiritually inescapable and a vital factor in what we now call theology. Now, two prominent writers, and we could have done many more, but I just chose two, one very early and one later. Two among the early church fathers, Justin Martyr and Augustine of Hippo, explored further the meaning of Christ as the logos. So we'll put the good guys in green. Justin Martyr and Augustine of Hippo. You're aware of Augustine already, somewhat. You should be, at least. Let's look at Justin Martyr. So after he converted from paganism, this leading Christian apologist explored the confluence. between the biblical testimony to the Logos and the Greek philosophers'ruminations about the Logos. Justin was the first theologian whose writings have come down to us, so he's kind of important. He gives us a picture into how they thought in the second century. He explained the person of Christ to the emperor Antoninus. in his first apology, in the human Christ, he said, abides the seed of God, the Word. So you can already hear his orthodoxy, can't you? In the human Christ abides the seed of God, the Word. He similarly informed the Roman Senate in his second apology that Christians worship the Word with the Father because he is the Son of God. from the unbegotten and ineffable God. Unbegotten meaning he comes from no one. Begotten, the Son is the begotten God, right? Because he comes from the Father. But he's also ineffable, mysterious. You can't define him. Entering the world, the Logos became man for our sakes. Becoming a partaker of our sufferings. he might also bring us healing. That statement is basic patristic soteriology. He became a partaker of our sufferings so that he might also bring us healing. It also sounds like Paul, doesn't it? He who became poor so that we might become rich. He took our, it is the great exchange. And we'll be coming back to this because that's about the work of Christ. But it's integrated with the person of Christ. As for the work of the Logos, Justin believed the Logos reveals himself to all men in some sense. I know this shocks many of my students because they've never heard this before. He says people receive the truth of the Logos in various degrees. of participation or sharing. So when the Old Testament prophets were delivering their inspired prophecies, he says they were moved by the divine word. Where do you think he might have gotten that? Open your Bibles to John chapter 1 and verse 9. So the light, who is the word, who is God. This light was coming into the world, but this light enlightens every man. Now, that's the question. What does that mean? Do you read that and say, I don't know, and move on? Or do you try to understand what it's saying? John 1.9 is teaching us that the Logos, the eternal son, shows something of himself to every man. And Augustine, of course, takes this and creates this doctrine of illumination, universal illumination out of it. And we'll come back to that. When the Old Testament prophets were delivering their inspired prophecies, Justin says they were moved by the divine word. Christ taught the first Christians the actual meaning of these elusive prophecies. For the Old Testament's messianic declarations were not yet understood. So he had to teach them this is what this means. These prophecies about death and suffering and resurrection, they apply to me. That was his teaching. Justin also called upon Greek philosophers, poets, and historians, including Socrates, Plato, and the Stoics to provide evidence for the existence of the Logos. He noted all of them believe in the Logos in some way. Marder even speculated that Plato took truths spoken earlier by Moses. There's a bit of speculation for him. I guess I'm going a bit far, but that's what he thought. Justin argued that wise persons will pay attention to and develop these seeds of truth, which have been dropped among all men. The light who enlightens every man is coming into the world. So everybody has some knowledge of God that has already been given to them, and they need to pay attention. However, when people assert contradictories to the words revelation of God, they show they do not accurately understand the truth that is given them. Paul says something very similar in Romans chapter 1, doesn't he? They suppress the truth of God. They exchanged it for a lie. They had it. They just didn't like it. And this is general revelation. So this great early apologist for Christianity was put to death for refusing to compromise his worship of the one true God and his incarnate word. So that's a good guy. Do you hear some of the same echoes of what we talked about in our last lecture about who is the Word of God? The Word of God become flesh. He's there. Second century. Well, now let's move into the fourth, fifth century. Augustine of Hippo. We're at the end of the patristic period. Augustine of Hippo, the great theologian in the Latin-speaking West. also considered the way the Greek tradition and scripture intertwine. In his Confessions, Augustine provided more detail about the problems which accompany pagan conversations about the Logos. But even as he decried pagan error, he lauded some of their basic findings. He says, yeah, they get some things right. So first, Augustine spoke positively about what pagan philosophers taught him. And then he wrote, I read, not of course word for word, that the sense was the same and it was supported by all kinds of different arguments, that at the beginning of time, the word already was. And God had the word abiding with him, and the word was God. You find statements very similar to this among the Stoics and the Neoplatons. That's the shocking thing. Augustine believed agreement between the wisest pagans and the Holy Scriptures was due to enlightenment by the Logos. He writes, but the word who is himself God is the true light, which enlightens every soul born into the world. Have you read that before? That's John 1.9. So drawing on John 1.9, Augustine thereby developed a doctrine of general human intellectual illumination by the word. Second, Augustine acknowledged, so there is something about God that he has shown of himself to every man. But Augustine acknowledged there were also profound differences between the words general illumination and inspired biblical revelation. While the Greeks perceived much, they still lacked the saving knowledge of the word's economy. They knew about the word, but they didn't know how the word saves. Regarding the incarnation, he says, I did not find it written in those books that he came to what was his own. Nor did Augustine find in the pagan writings that the word was made flesh and came to dwell among us. They do not say that he dispossessed himself and took the nature of a slave. Regarding the crucifixion, he says there is no word in those books to say that in his own appointed time he underwent death for us sinners. So if you want to be saved, that general illumination of the word is just not going to do. They know about God, but they don't really know Christ and what he's done in his work of salvation. Now, Augustine saw some good in paganism. So like the Israelites who despoiled the Egyptians, he received the gold available in their learning. But he advocated using their ideas only with great care. Pagan learning told him before he was converted, he says, that there was something to be seen, but also that I was not yet able to see it. He knew there was a God, he just couldn't see God. He knew there was something there, but he couldn't figure it out. And he was a good philosopher before he became a believer. So pagans invariably misuse... the golden knowledge of God they received by grace, and they exchanged the truth for idols in all kinds of make-believe. So he's saying, listen, paganism won't give you Christ. You've got to have the Word of God. So following the logic of the divine word revealed to the prophets and the apostles in Holy Scripture, Augustine ultimately rejected pagan idolatry, which misused general illumination to follow the incarnate word in humility and in faith. Well, so you've got a sense that the word of God is definitely under discussion. You've got a sense that the Word of God is coming to flesh in Jesus Christ, that he died and rose again. You've got this from the early church fathers. They understand this about the Word of God. They also say there's a general illumination of the Word. But there's also a lot of error out there. So we need to continue talking about the church fathers. But let's get into two church fathers that really should be known by you. Athanasius and Cyril. And that's why I assigned those little books by Athanasius and Cyril to you in your readings. You need to be reading those books. There will be tests on them. I do want to point to some things out of these books to you that might be helpful to you and they might be good, Chris, to have on the test. particular things about that Athanasius and Cyril. So two prominent early church fathers were particularly instrumental in further developing the contours of Orthodox Christology. Athanasius and Cyril served as bishops of the same large and powerful multicultural city in North Africa, the port of Alexandria at the entrance to the Nile Delta. During the early 1st century, Athanasius exposited and defended biblical teaching about the person of Christ as the Arian controversy unfolded. We've already talked about him to a great extent. During the early 5th century, so a century later, Cyril exposited and defended biblical teaching about the person of Christ as the Nestorian controversy unfolded. and both preserved and advanced the Nicene doctrine of Jesus Christ, along with another guy that we're going to mention, but he'll come towards the end. We've got a few people to talk about. but Maximus the Confessor, not the gladiator, another very important church father. And Maximus was active towards the end of the great period of Christological dogmatic development. And these are, especially these three, they are exemplars of Orthodox teaching about the one Lord Jesus Christ, who is true God and true man. I highly recommend getting to know them. Let's talk about Athanasius of Alexandria, the author of this book. He came in the early 4th century to prominence. Athanasius explained and defended the New Testament's ontological description of the eternal Logos who became flesh. Before entering the fray against Arianism, Athanasius exegeted the doctrine of the generation of the Son from Scripture. And he did this historically, linguistically, canonically. He was a good Bible reader and commentator. Hush's biblical interpretation led him to a high doctrine. of the person of the word. The eternal word he often recalled is in the Father, John 14, 16, equal to God, Philippians 2, 6, and one with the Father, John 10, 30. So he's taking those passages that show us the unity and equality of Christ and the Father, the Father and the Son. And he writes, the son being from the father and belonging to his essence is inalterable and unchangeable as the father himself. So he's unalterable and unchangeable. Now, like Justin and Augustine, Athanasius, early in his theological career, sharpened his doctrine of the eternal logos. from reading scripture, and he did it in debate with Jewish rabbis and pagan philosophers. What you need to understand is that Athanasius wrote this book before he engaged in the Aryan consecration, and he wrote a lot afterwards too, a lot of Biblicals to Jesus and polemic, but he wrote this little book because he's trying to get a handle on who Jesus Christ is. He drew a clear line between the creator's nature and creative nature. Remember that strong line we have between God and creation? So he's doing that. There's God, there's everything else. And don't confuse the two. He agrees with that. He supports that. But he noted that in the biblical text, the eternal word was on the... divine side of the anoptological divine. And this is the difficulty. We know that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We also know that the Word became flesh. And our minds want to either have him on the divine side, or the creaturely side, or maybe somewhere in the middle. And what Athanasius is saying, he's on the divine side. who enters the creaturely side, who assumes creaturehood. Despite being persecuted and chased into exile five times, Athanasius stood courageously by a central conviction garnered from scripture that genuine Christianity stands or falls by the confession of the full divinity of the word so the divine ontology of the word is identified with god and related to god through eternal generation so we talked about that quite a bit and remember the nicene creed includes this i've given you some scriptures one of the students asked me and i wanted to just mention this for everyone how do you define generation well you really don't What it means is that he came from the Father. He's not a creature. So when you generate a child, you didn't create that child. And that child is just like you. Everything that you are, that child is. So your nature is that child's nature. And that's what we're supposed to get from the terminology. But how did it work? We have no idea. It's eternal. And remember that all metaphors point to God, but they don't capture God. And so there will remain an ineffability about the divine begottenness. And he began to defend that Nicene doctrine of the eternal generation, even at great personal cost. His biblical convictions prompted him to confess that the word of the Father is himself divine, that all things owe their being to his will and power, and that it is through him that the Father gives order to creation, by him that all things are moved, and through him that they receive their being. So the word is the creator, and I think that is important. to get a hold of. Look at page 25 in your book on Athanasius, and then you can see the same quote. Just so you know, the way to read Athanasius'On the Incarnation, there is a sense of progression. So it begins with creation and it ends with... final things. But it begins with the word and it ends with the word. And in the middle of that is the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I have a different translation. What do you have? What chapter? That's chapter one. Chapter one, section one. Right at the beginning there. The word who created all things also redeems his creatures. For the one Father has employed the same agent for both works, infecting the salvation of the world through the same word who made it in the beginning. And you can find that on the next page. And that is at the end of... chapter 1, section 1. And he writes, moreover, there is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation. The one Father has employed the same agent for both works. So the Word is his agent, right? Athanasius believed only the Word could save falling humanity, for only he was both God and man. And he writes that man is created in the image of God, but the word is the image absolute. So look in this version, page 38. I think that's important to grasp. This would be section, chapter 3, section 11. But in fact, the good God has given them a share in his own image. That's what makes them rational, right? That is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same image and likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of God-likeness in themselves, they may be able to perceive the image absolute. That is, the word himself. Other fathers would say it like this. We are created in the image. Christ is the image. So we are created in the Christ is here. Use the image absolute. We are images by participation, by creation. The Savior of us all, the Word of God, in his great love, took to himself a body and moved this man among men, meaning their senses, so to speak, pathway. You can find that on page 43 again. So he's moving through creation, and that's in section 15. Then he becomes a human being. He takes to himself a body, meaning there's senses, so to speak, halfway. He became himself an object for the senses. so that those who are seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which he, the Word of God, did in the body. By the way, in the previous section, I love what he says as to why only the Word can save us. He says, you cannot put strength in others what is warped in yourself. And that's why the Word has to do it. You and I can't save ourselves. He's got to do it. Against those who diminish the word through the incarnation, Athanasius espoused his deity. He says the word was not hedged in by his body, nor did his presence in the body prevent his being present everywhere as well. So look at page 45, section 17. The word was not hedged in by his body. When he moved his body, he did not cease also to direct the universe by his mind and mind. No, the marvelous truth is that being the word so far from being himself contained by anything, he actually contained all things himself. Do you see how he's moving back and forth between the limits of his humanity and the no limits of his deity? The Orthodox mind holds on to the truths of the deity and the humanity of Christ without surrendering either one. Christ's divine immutability was not compromised by his assumption of human mutability. What do I mean by that? When Christ became a human being, as a human being, he is subject to change, right? He grew in wisdom and stature. This is why, you know, if you're interested in Islam, they have some really bizarre ideas about Esau, Jesus. And one of them is that he spoke to Mary while as an infant. As an infant, spoken plain, I guess. Aramaic while he was an infant. Listen, no, scripture is clear. He grew. He changed as a human being. So as a human being, he changes. He suffers. He dies. He rises. As God, he is the one who doesn't change. And holding those two great truths at the same time is really hard for us. Because we want to mutable his immutability. We want to mutate him in our mind in order to preserve the unity. But that's not how you preserve the unity. You don't preserve his unity by diminishing his deity. You also don't preserve the unity by diminishing his humanity. Athanasius also promoted the partitive exegesis of Scripture. to help believers understand how Christ can be described in both divine and human terms without compromising his unity. The Word always is God and acts as God, even as he assumes human nature and acts as man. So biblical texts, when you're reading biblical texts which speak of Christ in exalted terms, they refer to his deity. Texts which speak of Christ in his humility refer to his humanity. And he is the one Christ, and he is God and man. And so that part of exegesis, and you can find this in a number of places, but look at page 46 or section 18, and you'll have it spelled out there. I think that is one of the most helpful parts of this text. is understanding. Look at the beginning of 18. Let me just read this to you. You must understand, therefore, that when writers on this sacred theme speak of him as eating and drinking and being born, they mean that the body as a body was born and sustained with the food proper to its nature, while God the Word who was united with it was at the same time ordering the universe and revealing himself through his bodily acts as not man only, but God. So if you see a divine act, it refers to his divine nature. If you see a human act, it refers to his human nature. Yet always he is one person. He is the divine human person. Make sense? You're saying it's also human. I trust it. Regarding Christ's humanity, Athanasius said this. You must understand that when the writers do this, they do this for its nature. Regarding Christ's deity, Athanasius said, God the Word, who is united with humanity, was at the same time ordering the universe. So the deity of the Word was not diminished or distorted by his incarnation, and his humanity was not compromised by his deity. Rather, humanity was perfected by the Word. so that we might come into the saving presence of God. And look at what he has to say about his body. His body was not for him a limitation, but an instrument, so that he was both in it and in all things, and outside all things, resting in the Father alone. At one and the same time, this is the wonder. Notice how his description, causes him to begin to worship. At one and the same time, this is the wonder, as man, he was living a human life, and as word, he was sustaining the life of the universe. And as son, he was in constant union with the Father. Not even his birth, therefore, changed him in any way, nor was he defiled by being in the body. Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it. Do you see what Athanasius is doing? He is constantly maintaining the unity and the deity and the humanity of Christ. Now, he's emphatic about the deity of Christ. And why is that? Because he has to defend the deity, as we explained before, against Arianism, which is trying to separate the son from the father. So, Arius wants to preserve the father by diminishing the son. Athanasius is the same. You can't do that. Any questions about Athanasius or anything else you want to bring up about your reading of Athanasius? I do have a question. It's one terminology question. Okay. Maybe explain a little bit, whatever uses the word rational. describing humans and then also Christ. It mentions in the introduction that it's kind of the best translation for that word, but it's still a little bit confusing at times. Yeah. So, and this goes back to the whole issue of the image. The reason that we are rational is we are made in the image of reason. Logos, if you remember, can be interpreted as a word. It can be interpreted as reason. And so it's got a broad range of meanings, all of which have something to do with the intellect and the movement of the intellect. And what he's trying to do is show that we are made in his image. Therefore, we have reason. We participate in his ultimate. reasonability. He's doing the same things that we just saw that Justin Martyr and Augustine are doing, pointing back to the logos. Carl Henry, by the way, the great evangelical theologian defending inerrancy and inspiration in the mid-20th century, he made the same kind of arguments about the logos. The logos is the basis of all human reason. Benedict XVI created an uproar. He was the pope before Francis. But he created an uproar when he argued, he went to a secular university and quoted a Byzantine emperor who was arguing against Muslims. So there you go, you've got secularism, Islam, and Christianity all in the conversation. And he said that with an agreement with the Byzantine emperor that... Only Christians can truly use their reason as it was meant to be because only they have that relationship with Christ being restored in them. That's a hefty claim. That's saying that only believers can truly begin to approach truth as it ought to be approached. The secularists and the Muslims. got really mad about that. But that's that same idea of the reason that is working. Some other things I might want to point out to you while we got him before us. Some of his statements, and I've got stars all over my book here. So section 21 on page 51, it was because it was precisely in order to be able to die that he had taken a body. And to prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection. So he is the power of God and the word of God and very life itself. And yet he dies. Why? So that he could arise. That's why he came. He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the life of himself. I mean, he's treading, he's stating biblical truth, and he's here treading on that mystery that we have so much difficulty with. He is the light and the life of the world. He is a life-giving spirit, and yet he dies. The next page, still in section 22. He accepted death at the hands of men, thereby completely to destroy it in his own body. A little further down, the supreme object of his coming was to bring about the resurrection of the body. This was to be the monument to his victory over death. the assurance to all that he had himself conquered corruption and that their own bodies also would eventually be incorrupted. And it was in token of that and as a pledge of the future resurrection that he kept his body incorrupt. When Christ arose from the grave, he guaranteed that all humanity would arise from the dead. He fundamentally transformed humanity in the resurrection. That's why everyone rises, either to salvation or to condemnation. I have a question about that. Yeah. Not that I have an answer, but go ahead. On page 30 in section 4, Ian mentioned where he says, beginning, come into, let's see. being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning through corruption to non-existence again? So he's saying if Jesus hadn't come and died for us, that all of humanity would have gone out of existence. But because of his death, all of humanity will be eternally existing now either in sin or death. Is that what he's saying? Yeah. Is that a doctrine of annihilation? I don't know. He is saying they're going to continue. So, yeah. Abba, maybe he's referring to the artificer. Is he referring to God the Father? He's referring to the artificer, to the creator. Christ is the artificer too. Right. But at least my translation has both the art of wisdom and Christ. It's kind of difficult to keep up with what title he was describing, which personality. Give me a page or a section. And meanwhile, while you're looking at that, look at the death of Christ under section 20, page 49, the bottom paragraph. In the middle of that, the body of the Word then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal, and like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability so that corruption could not touch it. Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once. The death of all was consummated in the Lord's body. Yet because the word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished. In section 27 of 9, he says, by Christ, death was destroyed. Look in section 32 on page 64. I think it's another great statement. He is very son of God, having his being from God as from a father whose word and wisdom and his power he is. He it is who in these latter days assumed a body for the salvation of us all and taught the world concerning the father. He it is who has destroyed death. and freely graced us all with incorruption through the promise of the resurrection, having raised his own body as its firstfruits, and displayed it by the sign of the cross as the monument to his victory over death and its corruption. So he is word, wisdom, power. He is, and there's a movement here again, and you'll see this repeatedly with the early church fathers. He is eternally divinely begotten. He assumed a body. He arose from the dead. And that repetition gets you to the heart of their understanding of the economy of salvation. Our salvation is due to these things in Christ. He refutes Jewish thinkers. He refutes pagan thinkers. I like some of his statements, which I think can be really preachable. So on page 78, section 43, some may then ask, why did he not manifest himself by means of other and nobler parts of creation and use some nobler instrument, such as the sun or moon or stars or fire or air instead of a mere man? The answer is this. The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men. We love spectacle. He kind of trashes that one. Thank you. I had a question. So you you kind of spoke of this framework to say, hey, if the text speaking of Christ's humility, then it's referring to his humanity. If it's. about his exaltation it's his deity does that framework get extended into other things like when he perceives someone's thoughts that's his deity when he um when he feels an emotion or is astonished at something that's his humanity like does that framework go all the way through okay i i think he would say that it goes all the way through yeah if there's something that is a uh displays limitation that's a humanity there's something that refers to you know you And we have various statements in Scripture. You know, he did not need anyone to tell him about what people were thinking because he knew what was in the hearts of men. Okay. That's a divine move. On the other hand, you know, it is not for you to know the day or the hour. That's for the Father. I don't know this. That's his humanity. Look at page 93, section 54, and here is the claim that just strikes the Western mind and just terrifies it. He indeed assumed humanity that we might become God. He manifested himself by means of a body. in order that we might perceive the mind of the unseen father. He endured shame for men that we might inherit immortality. He himself was unhurt by this, for he is impassable and incorruptible, but by his own impassibility he kept and healed the suffering men on whose account he thus endured. He's not saying that we become, he's saying we do participate in the divine nature. Peter says that in 2 Peter 1.4. So this is the doctrine, especially Eastern and patristic doctrine of deification. We participate in God. Now, we believe this. We just don't like to call it what it is. So if you believe in eternal life, you believe that you've gotten something from God that you don't have. Eternity. Really, God is eternal. So you believe in deification. You're like, oh, thanks. I didn't think I believed in it. You better believe me. Now, you and I participate in the divine nature by grace, where he has it by nature. He gives it to us. And that's why the incarnation. And that's what he's saying. So it's a pithy statement that really causes us to step back. Okay, there's so much we could do here, but we're going to put Athanasius down. What are we doing on time? Why don't we take a 10-minute break, your team, and we'll come back and pick up from there. We haven't gotten into many heretics yet. We've got to talk about heretics.

But Lord, help us to take and submit our minds and our systems to your Word. Help us to read Scripture with humility and to read it with other Christians, not assuming that somehow we alone have access to the truth about your word. So, Lord, let us learn from our forefathers and our foremothers about who your son, Jesus Christ, is. And as we do so, Lord, I pray that you will help us to worship you, Lord, as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit. In Jesus'name, amen.

Amen. So, I've given the PowerPoint to... Chris, and we'll be following that tonight. From first to last, Scripture warns against those who would deny, distort, or diminish the Word of God. Now, mind you, I'm using Word of God often, and context will only tell you, using it with regard to its three biblical meanings.

There is the eternal Word who became flesh, that is Jesus Christ. There's the incarnate word, right? Then there is the proclaimed word of God given to the prophets and the apostles, and also repeated today whenever we proclaim that word that was given to the prophets and the apostles.

And then there is the written word of God, which is Scripture. And so all three senses have to mean the word of God. And Scripture warns against those who would deny, distort, or diminish the word of God.

The serpents'first recorded words distorted God's Word. Just read Genesis chapter 3. He knows how to mess with God's Word. He ends up denying it. Moses warned against adding to or subtracting from the law.

So you don't add to the law, you don't subtract from it. Jeremiah repeatedly proclaimed judgment upon prophets pretending to speak for God and upon a king for destroying God's word. Remember when he was taking the word of God and slicing it into pieces and throwing it in the fire? God proclaimed judgment upon him.

Jesus, the incarnate word, affirmed the written word is unalterable. not a jot or a tittle shall pass away until the law is fulfilled in its completeness. And Jesus warned that false messiahs, false Christs, and false prophets would seek to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. There's a warning.

True Christ, you have false Christ. Yes. Number question. Is salvation and salvation the same thing? I'm sorry?

Is election and salvation the same thing? Are they being used synonymously here? Oh, in this passage? Yeah. But that didn't define election for you.

I'm listening to you go there. Yeah, we'll do that this semester. His apostles reviewed teachers who misinterpret the eternal word to bring in destructive heresies.

And the biblical canon concludes with a reminder that the divine word is returning to judge, and that the word warns against subtracting from or adding to the written word. So you can't add to the word, you can't subtract to it, and the eternal word is coming back bearing a sword of judgment. But don't mess with the word. There's a problem that we have with false Christs.

While the Chalcedonian formula, which we provided at the end of the last lecture, captures the basics of true Christology, it is advantageous to see how Orthodox theologians arrived at the dogma of the true Christ. Both before and after Chalcedon, which occurred in 451, many other heresies and errors about Christ have arisen to mislead God's people. The battle to defend the truth teaching about Christ continues to this day. Now identifying false Christs, identifying false Christs helps the churches to recognize and revere the true Christ.

The apostles faced this danger, and the early church fathers faced it too. And it would be wise to honor the words of the former and to pay attention to the conclusions of the latter. It is incumbent upon Christians to discern clearly and to speak carefully about the true Christ for four reasons other than the ongoing phenomena of false Christs.

And I list those reasons on your PowerPoint. So in the second place, the New Testament is very clear that the only true Christ, that only the true Christ can bring a person into the kingdom of God. There is no salvation available under any other truth in any other name or through any other person.

That's why you need to know who the true Christ is. If you're going to be saved, you must come to salvation in him, through him. for his name.

This is why understanding the person of Christ is not a secondary but a primary matter. Thirdly, Christians are called to be ambassadors of the true Christ, so we must speak of him boldly. That's what we're called to do.

We must also be extraordinarily careful never to distort, and that's the language that Paul uses in Galatians. We must never distort his gospel while proclaiming it. Perverting the gospel of the true Christ brings condemnations upon the proponents of that false gospel. So Christological heresy, bad teaching, heresy and error about Christ must be rebuked, and the true dogma of Jesus Christ must be assiduously, constantly, vehemently maintained it is true in Orthodox Church.

This is not a matter for messing around. Just as with the doctrine of the Trinity, we must be careful never to let go of who the true Christ is. And that means getting a handle as best we can from Scripture and in conversation with other believers about who the true Christ is. Fourthly, fallen minds easily change Scripture's presentation of the true Christ by glibly presuming to divine God, by forgetting his deity, his thoughts, and his ways exist beyond our conceptual ability.

So read Isaiah chapters 46 and 55, and it becomes very clear that our attempts to explain God tread on error, and we have to be careful. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His deity is beyond our ability to define. The Cyril of Alexandria, the great champion of Christological Orthodoxy, the author of this book that I had you read, or that you're supposed to be reading even now.

I hope you brought it tonight. Cyril said that every human attempt fails to capture the mysterious truth of Christ being both God and man. Let me mention this word mystery.

Sometimes I hear people refer to mystery and they bring up some type of philosophical conundrum, like a philosophical definition of predestination. And then they appeal when they bring their system to the text and then it doesn't quite fit the text. They'll say, well, that's a mystery.

Well, that's not what scripture refers to as the mystery. The mystery. is Jesus Christ. He is the plan of God unfolding in this world.

that the eternal word became flesh died on the cross arose from the dead this is the mystery that was beheld that was held back the mystery that has been taken and given to us and so the mystery is christ himself so your philosophy and your inability to force your philosophy into the biblical text is not the mystery the mystery is why you even do that the mystery is about christ That's God's mystery. That's the revealed mystery. That's the mystery we know and we're still trying to get into and understand better so that we can worship Christ fully.

So every human attempt to fells that tries to capture the mysterious truth of Christ being both God and man. As Cyril writes these words, the method of these things is altogether ineffable, and there is no mind that can attain to such subtle and transcendent ideas. So instead, we must point with humility and prayer beyond our representations to him alone.

So we speak of Christ, and we repeat the words of Christ, and about Christ that we get from Scripture, we try to explain Christ. But at some point we have to say, you know, Him. And it becomes an act of humility.

Scripture says that Christ's humanity is like a veil which conceals His deity. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 20. So it would be wise to recognize the limits of our human conceptual abilities. When you speak of Christ, so many people speak of Christ and they only think of his humanity and they often get his humanity wrong and they forget that Christ is God in the flesh and that the flesh veils his humanity, that you do see God in the face of Jesus Christ, but you don't even know what that means.

And that calls for humility. And finally, we must worship the true Christ. Recall the contours of the saving gospel of Jesus Christ before you go any further. God the Word took our human nature to himself to perfect it for us.

Hebrews chapter 2, verse 10. That's what he's doing with the humanity. He's perfecting it. His incarnation involved neither subtraction nor addition to his divine person, or either would impose change upon the immutable one.

Remember Hebrews chapter 13, verse 8, it says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So he doesn't change, and yet he's perfected. Well, how do you bring both of these truths, which are affirmed in the book of Hebrews, together? He doesn't change, yet he suffers. Suffering is change.

So how do you bring these truths together? Well, the only way you can do it is through Orthodox Christology. When Christ assumes the human nature, there are people who try to present Christ as somehow losing part of his deity. That's heresy.

There are others that assume that Christ in his person has been changed, that the word has been changed by the humanity. No, he assumes it. He's not diminished by the word.

He actually elevates the humanity. He took our... or assumed. The Greek word in Philippians chapter 2 verse 7 is labon.

It means to assume. He assumed our form and likeness. And Jesus, after assuming our form, our likeness, is henceforward embodied. As man, he is historical.

He embraced our history. so that human beings may come to know him. However, as God, he remains eternally above history.

So he has always been God. Yet he enters history, right? But at the same time that he is within history in a body, he's still upholding the universe that includes his body. We wouldn't have him in one place. Well, he is in one place, but he's also every place is in him at the same time because he's God.

These truths really, they really cause us difficulty. He embraced our history. However, he remains eternally above history. The divine son is unknowable except through his gracious self-revelation in his incarnation.

His ineffability, that's another way to say his mysteriousness. His ineffability should prompt us to worship him. And he has made himself known to us.

And as such, we must worship him. That's why you need to know who the true Christ is. If you don't worship the true Christ, you are engaged in idolatry. And there is judgment for idolatry.

Many errors and heresies in church history occur through diminishing the honor, the worship due to Jesus Christ. glibly presuming he can grasp the totality of what the name of Christ or describe how Christ's identity is constituted. The heretic distorts the truth of his person.

Some compromise the irreducible truth that he is God who became and remains man. Others deny that he died and arose from the dead. Others failed to see that even while the nails held him on the cross, he continued to uphold creation. Some compromise his deity. Others his humanity.

Yet others his personal unity. One apostle effectively summarizes all their efforts under the rubric of denying Jesus Christ our only Master and Lord. Do you hear what he said? People deny Jesus Christ our only master and Lord. Jesus Christ is a human name, and yet he is our only master and Lord.

He is divine. So you deny him by denying either his humanity or his deity, you're already in trouble. And by the way, Jude has some really harsh things to say about these false teachers.

Read Jude sometime. He'll scare you. By contrast, the true Orthodox believers affirm the human Jesus of history is the Christ of faith. He is the eternal word of God who became flesh and remains an embodied human being, experiencing for us not only incarnation, but also undergoing death. He then arose from the dead for our justification.

then ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he intercedes for believers today. Hebrews chapter 4, verses 14 through 16. So Jesus Christ is one person, both God and man, and his glorious ontology ought never be diminished, distorted, or denied. So our goal in this lecture is to detect the true Christ by rejecting the false Christs. To see the true Christ, we will review the Orthodox consensus about Christ as it developed through the teachings of the early church fathers and became formalized through debates with countless heresies in the early ecumenical councils.

So we're going to be looking at early church fathers. We're going to be looking at various heretics, and we're going to be looking at various ecumenical councils. And by being aware of the false Christs that come through the heretics, and how the councils and the fathers responded, we'll... be better placed to understand the true Christ. Well, let's look, first of all, at the logos according to the early church fathers.

So this is our outline today, the logos according to the early church fathers, the true Christ and Orthodox thought. Then we'll look at conciliar Christology, and then we'll bring it back to a conclusion. But due to its basis in biblical revelation and its multicultural background, the concept of the logos, whose biblical meaning we reviewed in the last lecture, was attractive to early Christian apologists and theologians. Hans von Hempenhausen said the acceptance of the Greek liturgy or legacy was spiritually inescapable and a vital factor in what we now call theology.

Now, two prominent writers, and we could have done many more, but I just chose two, one very early and one later. Two among the early church fathers, Justin Martyr and Augustine of Hippo, explored further the meaning of Christ as the logos. So we'll put the good guys in green.

Justin Martyr and Augustine of Hippo. You're aware of Augustine already, somewhat. You should be, at least. Let's look at Justin Martyr.

So after he converted from paganism, this leading Christian apologist explored the confluence. between the biblical testimony to the Logos and the Greek philosophers'ruminations about the Logos. Justin was the first theologian whose writings have come down to us, so he's kind of important. He gives us a picture into how they thought in the second century.

He explained the person of Christ to the emperor Antoninus. in his first apology, in the human Christ, he said, abides the seed of God, the Word. So you can already hear his orthodoxy, can't you?

In the human Christ abides the seed of God, the Word. He similarly informed the Roman Senate in his second apology that Christians worship the Word with the Father because he is the Son of God. from the unbegotten and ineffable God.

Unbegotten meaning he comes from no one. Begotten, the Son is the begotten God, right? Because he comes from the Father.

But he's also ineffable, mysterious. You can't define him. Entering the world, the Logos became man for our sakes. Becoming a partaker of our sufferings.

he might also bring us healing. That statement is basic patristic soteriology. He became a partaker of our sufferings so that he might also bring us healing. It also sounds like Paul, doesn't it? He who became poor so that we might become rich.

He took our, it is the great exchange. And we'll be coming back to this because that's about the work of Christ. But it's integrated with the person of Christ. As for the work of the Logos, Justin believed the Logos reveals himself to all men in some sense.

I know this shocks many of my students because they've never heard this before. He says people receive the truth of the Logos in various degrees. of participation or sharing.

So when the Old Testament prophets were delivering their inspired prophecies, he says they were moved by the divine word. Where do you think he might have gotten that? Open your Bibles to John chapter 1 and verse 9. So the light, who is the word, who is God. This light was coming into the world, but this light enlightens every man. Now, that's the question.

What does that mean? Do you read that and say, I don't know, and move on? Or do you try to understand what it's saying?

John 1.9 is teaching us that the Logos, the eternal son, shows something of himself to every man. And Augustine, of course, takes this and creates this doctrine of illumination, universal illumination out of it. And we'll come back to that.

When the Old Testament prophets were delivering their inspired prophecies, Justin says they were moved by the divine word. Christ taught the first Christians the actual meaning of these elusive prophecies. For the Old Testament's messianic declarations were not yet understood. So he had to teach them this is what this means.

These prophecies about death and suffering and resurrection, they apply to me. That was his teaching. Justin also called upon Greek philosophers, poets, and historians, including Socrates, Plato, and the Stoics to provide evidence for the existence of the Logos.

He noted all of them believe in the Logos in some way. Marder even speculated that Plato took truths spoken earlier by Moses. There's a bit of speculation for him.

I guess I'm going a bit far, but that's what he thought. Justin argued that wise persons will pay attention to and develop these seeds of truth, which have been dropped among all men. The light who enlightens every man is coming into the world.

So everybody has some knowledge of God that has already been given to them, and they need to pay attention. However, when people assert contradictories to the words revelation of God, they show they do not accurately understand the truth that is given them. Paul says something very similar in Romans chapter 1, doesn't he? They suppress the truth of God. They exchanged it for a lie.

They had it. They just didn't like it. And this is general revelation.

So this great early apologist for Christianity was put to death for refusing to compromise his worship of the one true God and his incarnate word. So that's a good guy. Do you hear some of the same echoes of what we talked about in our last lecture about who is the Word of God? The Word of God become flesh. He's there.

Second century. Well, now let's move into the fourth, fifth century. Augustine of Hippo.

We're at the end of the patristic period. Augustine of Hippo, the great theologian in the Latin-speaking West. also considered the way the Greek tradition and scripture intertwine.

In his Confessions, Augustine provided more detail about the problems which accompany pagan conversations about the Logos. But even as he decried pagan error, he lauded some of their basic findings. He says, yeah, they get some things right.

So first, Augustine spoke positively about what pagan philosophers taught him. And then he wrote, I read, not of course word for word, that the sense was the same and it was supported by all kinds of different arguments, that at the beginning of time, the word already was. And God had the word abiding with him, and the word was God.

You find statements very similar to this among the Stoics and the Neoplatons. That's the shocking thing. Augustine believed agreement between the wisest pagans and the Holy Scriptures was due to enlightenment by the Logos. He writes, but the word who is himself God is the true light, which enlightens every soul born into the world. Have you read that before?

That's John 1.9. So drawing on John 1.9, Augustine thereby developed a doctrine of general human intellectual illumination by the word. Second, Augustine acknowledged, so there is something about God that he has shown of himself to every man.

But Augustine acknowledged there were also profound differences between the words general illumination and inspired biblical revelation. While the Greeks perceived much, they still lacked the saving knowledge of the word's economy. They knew about the word, but they didn't know how the word saves.

Regarding the incarnation, he says, I did not find it written in those books that he came to what was his own. Nor did Augustine find in the pagan writings that the word was made flesh and came to dwell among us. They do not say that he dispossessed himself and took the nature of a slave. Regarding the crucifixion, he says there is no word in those books to say that in his own appointed time he underwent death for us sinners. So if you want to be saved, that general illumination of the word is just not going to do.

They know about God, but they don't really know Christ and what he's done in his work of salvation. Now, Augustine saw some good in paganism. So like the Israelites who despoiled the Egyptians, he received the gold available in their learning.

But he advocated using their ideas only with great care. Pagan learning told him before he was converted, he says, that there was something to be seen, but also that I was not yet able to see it. He knew there was a God, he just couldn't see God.

He knew there was something there, but he couldn't figure it out. And he was a good philosopher before he became a believer. So pagans invariably misuse...

the golden knowledge of God they received by grace, and they exchanged the truth for idols in all kinds of make-believe. So he's saying, listen, paganism won't give you Christ. You've got to have the Word of God. So following the logic of the divine word revealed to the prophets and the apostles in Holy Scripture, Augustine ultimately rejected pagan idolatry, which misused general illumination to follow the incarnate word in humility and in faith.

Well, so you've got a sense that the word of God is definitely under discussion. You've got a sense that the Word of God is coming to flesh in Jesus Christ, that he died and rose again. You've got this from the early church fathers. They understand this about the Word of God. They also say there's a general illumination of the Word.

But there's also a lot of error out there. So we need to continue talking about the church fathers. But let's get into two church fathers that really should be known by you. Athanasius and Cyril.

And that's why I assigned those little books by Athanasius and Cyril to you in your readings. You need to be reading those books. There will be tests on them.

I do want to point to some things out of these books to you that might be helpful to you and they might be good, Chris, to have on the test. particular things about that Athanasius and Cyril. So two prominent early church fathers were particularly instrumental in further developing the contours of Orthodox Christology. Athanasius and Cyril served as bishops of the same large and powerful multicultural city in North Africa, the port of Alexandria at the entrance to the Nile Delta.

During the early 1st century, Athanasius exposited and defended biblical teaching about the person of Christ as the Arian controversy unfolded. We've already talked about him to a great extent. During the early 5th century, so a century later, Cyril exposited and defended biblical teaching about the person of Christ as the Nestorian controversy unfolded. and both preserved and advanced the Nicene doctrine of Jesus Christ, along with another guy that we're going to mention, but he'll come towards the end. We've got a few people to talk about.

but Maximus the Confessor, not the gladiator, another very important church father. And Maximus was active towards the end of the great period of Christological dogmatic development. And these are, especially these three, they are exemplars of Orthodox teaching about the one Lord Jesus Christ, who is true God and true man. I highly recommend getting to know them.

Let's talk about Athanasius of Alexandria, the author of this book. He came in the early 4th century to prominence. Athanasius explained and defended the New Testament's ontological description of the eternal Logos who became flesh. Before entering the fray against Arianism, Athanasius exegeted the doctrine of the generation of the Son from Scripture.

And he did this historically, linguistically, canonically. He was a good Bible reader and commentator. Hush's biblical interpretation led him to a high doctrine. of the person of the word.

The eternal word he often recalled is in the Father, John 14, 16, equal to God, Philippians 2, 6, and one with the Father, John 10, 30. So he's taking those passages that show us the unity and equality of Christ and the Father, the Father and the Son. And he writes, the son being from the father and belonging to his essence is inalterable and unchangeable as the father himself. So he's unalterable and unchangeable. Now, like Justin and Augustine, Athanasius, early in his theological career, sharpened his doctrine of the eternal logos.

from reading scripture, and he did it in debate with Jewish rabbis and pagan philosophers. What you need to understand is that Athanasius wrote this book before he engaged in the Aryan consecration, and he wrote a lot afterwards too, a lot of Biblicals to Jesus and polemic, but he wrote this little book because he's trying to get a handle on who Jesus Christ is. He drew a clear line between the creator's nature and creative nature. Remember that strong line we have between God and creation? So he's doing that.

There's God, there's everything else. And don't confuse the two. He agrees with that. He supports that. But he noted that in the biblical text, the eternal word was on the...

divine side of the anoptological divine. And this is the difficulty. We know that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

We also know that the Word became flesh. And our minds want to either have him on the divine side, or the creaturely side, or maybe somewhere in the middle. And what Athanasius is saying, he's on the divine side. who enters the creaturely side, who assumes creaturehood. Despite being persecuted and chased into exile five times, Athanasius stood courageously by a central conviction garnered from scripture that genuine Christianity stands or falls by the confession of the full divinity of the word so the divine ontology of the word is identified with god and related to god through eternal generation so we talked about that quite a bit and remember the nicene creed includes this i've given you some scriptures one of the students asked me and i wanted to just mention this for everyone how do you define generation well you really don't What it means is that he came from the Father.

He's not a creature. So when you generate a child, you didn't create that child. And that child is just like you.

Everything that you are, that child is. So your nature is that child's nature. And that's what we're supposed to get from the terminology.

But how did it work? We have no idea. It's eternal. And remember that all metaphors point to God, but they don't capture God. And so there will remain an ineffability about the divine begottenness.

And he began to defend that Nicene doctrine of the eternal generation, even at great personal cost. His biblical convictions prompted him to confess that the word of the Father is himself divine, that all things owe their being to his will and power, and that it is through him that the Father gives order to creation, by him that all things are moved, and through him that they receive their being. So the word is the creator, and I think that is important.

to get a hold of. Look at page 25 in your book on Athanasius, and then you can see the same quote. Just so you know, the way to read Athanasius'On the Incarnation, there is a sense of progression.

So it begins with creation and it ends with... final things. But it begins with the word and it ends with the word.

And in the middle of that is the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I have a different translation. What do you have? What chapter?

That's chapter one. Chapter one, section one. Right at the beginning there. The word who created all things also redeems his creatures.

For the one Father has employed the same agent for both works, infecting the salvation of the world through the same word who made it in the beginning. And you can find that on the next page. And that is at the end of... chapter 1, section 1. And he writes, moreover, there is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation. The one Father has employed the same agent for both works.

So the Word is his agent, right? Athanasius believed only the Word could save falling humanity, for only he was both God and man. And he writes that man is created in the image of God, but the word is the image absolute.

So look in this version, page 38. I think that's important to grasp. This would be section, chapter 3, section 11. But in fact, the good God has given them a share in his own image. That's what makes them rational, right? That is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same image and likeness.

Why? Simply in order that through this gift of God-likeness in themselves, they may be able to perceive the image absolute. That is, the word himself. Other fathers would say it like this. We are created in the image.

Christ is the image. So we are created in the Christ is here. Use the image absolute.

We are images by participation, by creation. The Savior of us all, the Word of God, in his great love, took to himself a body and moved this man among men, meaning their senses, so to speak, pathway. You can find that on page 43 again. So he's moving through creation, and that's in section 15. Then he becomes a human being. He takes to himself a body, meaning there's senses, so to speak, halfway.

He became himself an object for the senses. so that those who are seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which he, the Word of God, did in the body. By the way, in the previous section, I love what he says as to why only the Word can save us. He says, you cannot put strength in others what is warped in yourself.

And that's why the Word has to do it. You and I can't save ourselves. He's got to do it.

Against those who diminish the word through the incarnation, Athanasius espoused his deity. He says the word was not hedged in by his body, nor did his presence in the body prevent his being present everywhere as well. So look at page 45, section 17. The word was not hedged in by his body.

When he moved his body, he did not cease also to direct the universe by his mind and mind. No, the marvelous truth is that being the word so far from being himself contained by anything, he actually contained all things himself. Do you see how he's moving back and forth between the limits of his humanity and the no limits of his deity?

The Orthodox mind holds on to the truths of the deity and the humanity of Christ without surrendering either one. Christ's divine immutability was not compromised by his assumption of human mutability. What do I mean by that? When Christ became a human being, as a human being, he is subject to change, right? He grew in wisdom and stature.

This is why, you know, if you're interested in Islam, they have some really bizarre ideas about Esau, Jesus. And one of them is that he spoke to Mary while as an infant. As an infant, spoken plain, I guess. Aramaic while he was an infant. Listen, no, scripture is clear.

He grew. He changed as a human being. So as a human being, he changes. He suffers. He dies.

He rises. As God, he is the one who doesn't change. And holding those two great truths at the same time is really hard for us. Because we want to mutable his immutability.

We want to mutate him in our mind in order to preserve the unity. But that's not how you preserve the unity. You don't preserve his unity by diminishing his deity.

You also don't preserve the unity by diminishing his humanity. Athanasius also promoted the partitive exegesis of Scripture. to help believers understand how Christ can be described in both divine and human terms without compromising his unity.

The Word always is God and acts as God, even as he assumes human nature and acts as man. So biblical texts, when you're reading biblical texts which speak of Christ in exalted terms, they refer to his deity. Texts which speak of Christ in his humility refer to his humanity. And he is the one Christ, and he is God and man. And so that part of exegesis, and you can find this in a number of places, but look at page 46 or section 18, and you'll have it spelled out there.

I think that is one of the most helpful parts of this text. is understanding. Look at the beginning of 18. Let me just read this to you.

You must understand, therefore, that when writers on this sacred theme speak of him as eating and drinking and being born, they mean that the body as a body was born and sustained with the food proper to its nature, while God the Word who was united with it was at the same time ordering the universe and revealing himself through his bodily acts as not man only, but God. So if you see a divine act, it refers to his divine nature. If you see a human act, it refers to his human nature.

Yet always he is one person. He is the divine human person. Make sense? You're saying it's also human.

I trust it. Regarding Christ's humanity, Athanasius said this. You must understand that when the writers do this, they do this for its nature.

Regarding Christ's deity, Athanasius said, God the Word, who is united with humanity, was at the same time ordering the universe. So the deity of the Word was not diminished or distorted by his incarnation, and his humanity was not compromised by his deity. Rather, humanity was perfected by the Word.

so that we might come into the saving presence of God. And look at what he has to say about his body. His body was not for him a limitation, but an instrument, so that he was both in it and in all things, and outside all things, resting in the Father alone.

At one and the same time, this is the wonder. Notice how his description, causes him to begin to worship. At one and the same time, this is the wonder, as man, he was living a human life, and as word, he was sustaining the life of the universe.

And as son, he was in constant union with the Father. Not even his birth, therefore, changed him in any way, nor was he defiled by being in the body. Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it.

Do you see what Athanasius is doing? He is constantly maintaining the unity and the deity and the humanity of Christ. Now, he's emphatic about the deity of Christ. And why is that?

Because he has to defend the deity, as we explained before, against Arianism, which is trying to separate the son from the father. So, Arius wants to preserve the father by diminishing the son. Athanasius is the same.

You can't do that. Any questions about Athanasius or anything else you want to bring up about your reading of Athanasius? I do have a question.

It's one terminology question. Okay. Maybe explain a little bit, whatever uses the word rational. describing humans and then also Christ.

It mentions in the introduction that it's kind of the best translation for that word, but it's still a little bit confusing at times. Yeah. So, and this goes back to the whole issue of the image.

The reason that we are rational is we are made in the image of reason. Logos, if you remember, can be interpreted as a word. It can be interpreted as reason.

And so it's got a broad range of meanings, all of which have something to do with the intellect and the movement of the intellect. And what he's trying to do is show that we are made in his image. Therefore, we have reason. We participate in his ultimate.

reasonability. He's doing the same things that we just saw that Justin Martyr and Augustine are doing, pointing back to the logos. Carl Henry, by the way, the great evangelical theologian defending inerrancy and inspiration in the mid-20th century, he made the same kind of arguments about the logos.

The logos is the basis of all human reason. Benedict XVI created an uproar. He was the pope before Francis. But he created an uproar when he argued, he went to a secular university and quoted a Byzantine emperor who was arguing against Muslims. So there you go, you've got secularism, Islam, and Christianity all in the conversation.

And he said that with an agreement with the Byzantine emperor that... Only Christians can truly use their reason as it was meant to be because only they have that relationship with Christ being restored in them. That's a hefty claim.

That's saying that only believers can truly begin to approach truth as it ought to be approached. The secularists and the Muslims. got really mad about that. But that's that same idea of the reason that is working. Some other things I might want to point out to you while we got him before us.

Some of his statements, and I've got stars all over my book here. So section 21 on page 51, it was because it was precisely in order to be able to die that he had taken a body. And to prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection. So he is the power of God and the word of God and very life itself. And yet he dies.

Why? So that he could arise. That's why he came. He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the life of himself.

I mean, he's treading, he's stating biblical truth, and he's here treading on that mystery that we have so much difficulty with. He is the light and the life of the world. He is a life-giving spirit, and yet he dies.

The next page, still in section 22. He accepted death at the hands of men, thereby completely to destroy it in his own body. A little further down, the supreme object of his coming was to bring about the resurrection of the body. This was to be the monument to his victory over death. the assurance to all that he had himself conquered corruption and that their own bodies also would eventually be incorrupted. And it was in token of that and as a pledge of the future resurrection that he kept his body incorrupt.

When Christ arose from the grave, he guaranteed that all humanity would arise from the dead. He fundamentally transformed humanity in the resurrection. That's why everyone rises, either to salvation or to condemnation. I have a question about that. Yeah.

Not that I have an answer, but go ahead. On page 30 in section 4, Ian mentioned where he says, beginning, come into, let's see. being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning through corruption to non-existence again? So he's saying if Jesus hadn't come and died for us, that all of humanity would have gone out of existence.

But because of his death, all of humanity will be eternally existing now either in sin or death. Is that what he's saying? Yeah.

Is that a doctrine of annihilation? I don't know. He is saying they're going to continue. So, yeah.

Abba, maybe he's referring to the artificer. Is he referring to God the Father? He's referring to the artificer, to the creator.

Christ is the artificer too. Right. But at least my translation has both the art of wisdom and Christ.

It's kind of difficult to keep up with what title he was describing, which personality. Give me a page or a section. And meanwhile, while you're looking at that, look at the death of Christ under section 20, page 49, the bottom paragraph.

In the middle of that, the body of the Word then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal, and like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability so that corruption could not touch it. Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once. The death of all was consummated in the Lord's body. Yet because the word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished.

In section 27 of 9, he says, by Christ, death was destroyed. Look in section 32 on page 64. I think it's another great statement. He is very son of God, having his being from God as from a father whose word and wisdom and his power he is.

He it is who in these latter days assumed a body for the salvation of us all and taught the world concerning the father. He it is who has destroyed death. and freely graced us all with incorruption through the promise of the resurrection, having raised his own body as its firstfruits, and displayed it by the sign of the cross as the monument to his victory over death and its corruption.

So he is word, wisdom, power. He is, and there's a movement here again, and you'll see this repeatedly with the early church fathers. He is eternally divinely begotten. He assumed a body. He arose from the dead.

And that repetition gets you to the heart of their understanding of the economy of salvation. Our salvation is due to these things in Christ. He refutes Jewish thinkers.

He refutes pagan thinkers. I like some of his statements, which I think can be really preachable. So on page 78, section 43, some may then ask, why did he not manifest himself by means of other and nobler parts of creation and use some nobler instrument, such as the sun or moon or stars or fire or air instead of a mere man?

The answer is this. The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men.

We love spectacle. He kind of trashes that one. Thank you.

I had a question. So you you kind of spoke of this framework to say, hey, if the text speaking of Christ's humility, then it's referring to his humanity. If it's. about his exaltation it's his deity does that framework get extended into other things like when he perceives someone's thoughts that's his deity when he um when he feels an emotion or is astonished at something that's his humanity like does that framework go all the way through okay i i think he would say that it goes all the way through yeah if there's something that is a uh displays limitation that's a humanity there's something that refers to you know you And we have various statements in Scripture. You know, he did not need anyone to tell him about what people were thinking because he knew what was in the hearts of men.

Okay. That's a divine move. On the other hand, you know, it is not for you to know the day or the hour.

That's for the Father. I don't know this. That's his humanity. Look at page 93, section 54, and here is the claim that just strikes the Western mind and just terrifies it. He indeed assumed humanity that we might become God.

He manifested himself by means of a body. in order that we might perceive the mind of the unseen father. He endured shame for men that we might inherit immortality.

He himself was unhurt by this, for he is impassable and incorruptible, but by his own impassibility he kept and healed the suffering men on whose account he thus endured. He's not saying that we become, he's saying we do participate in the divine nature. Peter says that in 2 Peter 1.4. So this is the doctrine, especially Eastern and patristic doctrine of deification.

We participate in God. Now, we believe this. We just don't like to call it what it is. So if you believe in eternal life, you believe that you've gotten something from God that you don't have.

Eternity. Really, God is eternal. So you believe in deification.

You're like, oh, thanks. I didn't think I believed in it. You better believe me.

Now, you and I participate in the divine nature by grace, where he has it by nature. He gives it to us. And that's why the incarnation.

And that's what he's saying. So it's a pithy statement that really causes us to step back. Okay, there's so much we could do here, but we're going to put Athanasius down.

What are we doing on time? Why don't we take a 10-minute break, your team, and we'll come back and pick up from there. We haven't gotten into many heretics yet.

We've got to talk about heretics.

Transcript for:Understanding the True Nature of Christ

Transcript for:
Understanding the True Nature of Christ