Let’s begin with a word of prayer.
Our Father, again, we’re grateful for the opportunity and the freedom and the heart that you’ve given us to study your Word together. We’re grateful for the subject that we have had under investigation these last many weeks. We recognize more each time we look into it that we’re in over our heads. The glory of our God is greater than we can comprehend. The mystery of our Lord—God and man—is more than we can comprehend. And yet we love to look into it. We love to be struck with your greatness and, with regard to Christ, the greatness of the condescension that he underwent to bring us salvation. We pray that you’ll give us a closer understanding of it again today. Lord, we pray that by it, you will make us more faithful worshipers of Christ. We pray in his name, amen.
Well, this is our last time looking at the creeds. If you do not have a handout, raise your hand. Someone will make sure that you have that. We’re going through Colossians, but in Colossians chapter 1, we have several statements—just exalted statements—with regard to the person of Christ. It’s one of the most important Christological passages in Paul. And so I decided let’s just take a little aside and look at the creeds. And so we have done that.
We saw in 325 the Nicene Creed and then the follow-up to the Nicene Creed in 381 at Constantinople, where primarily the idea is to address the Trinity, but the issue specifically at hand is the nature of the Son and his relation to the Father. Who is the Son and how does he relate to the Father? And the grand declaration and the all-important word of Nicaea is that word “consubstantial.” He’s consubstantial with the Father. Whatever that is, whatever the Father is—it doesn’t speculate metaphysically as to what he is—but whatever he is, the Son is that also. And that had to be argued out, and it was hammered out in some specific ways. Particularly, we saw the importance of the language of begetting and procession with regard to the Spirit. This is how God is both one and three.
Now make sure you understand this. We are not, and the Bible does not ask people to believe nonsense. To say that God is one and three in the same sense would be self-contradictory and it would be nonsense. God is not one and three in the same sense. He is one as to his being and his essence; he’s three as to his persons. Now we’re still in over our heads. This is mystery, but it’s not self-contradictory. It’s not inconsistent at all. And we saw that the early church fathers try to bring out for us in statement what the Scriptures reveal about the relations of Father, Son, and Spirit. How is it that God is one and yet three in person? And the answer is in their relations. Father is Father, the Son is Son, the Spirit is Spirit. The Father begets, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
Somebody commented to me afterwards last time that they were struck with the fact that when we look into this more and more, you realize how in over your head you are. And I was really glad for the comment. We should expect to see that. And in fact, I think that’s part of the glory of studying what God has revealed about himself. The more you go into it, you realize that he is greater than we can comprehend. And that’s good; if my mind could comprehend everything about God and who he is, then he wouldn’t be much of a God.
How Do We Explain The Two Natures Of Jesus?
All right, so we’ve seen that now with Nicaea and Constantinople. The doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the deity of Christ now is settled. But now the next question comes up, and that is: how do we explain the two natures of Jesus? We’ve settled now that he is consubstantial with the Father. And obviously he’s human. He’s divine and human. How does that happen? What does it look like? How do you explain it? How do you hammer it out?
The basic text, I suppose, the most important text for it in the New Testament, is John chapter 1 and verse 14. Remember how the Word is introduced in John 1:1: he’s eternal, he’s with God, he is God. But in verse 14, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glories of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” It is packed full of statements about his deity, but it says he became flesh. Just a remarkable statement in John chapter one: this one who is eternally with God, the one who is eternally God, became this stuff—flesh. So how do you say that? How do you explain that? We affirm, and the creeds affirm, that Christ the Son is true God and true man.
But how do those natures relate to one another? Now there are obviously several different ways you can handle that. One would be to deny his deity. That was Arius. Another would be to deny his humanity. That was the earlier Docetism. And there are some other ways to do it. One was from a man by the name of Apollinaris. Apollinaris, he died about 382 AD, emphasized the deity of Christ, but in such a way that it compromised his humanity. So what he affirmed was that Jesus was God incarnate in a sense, but it was his body. And he denied that Jesus had a rational human soul. His mind was the eternal Word. His mind was the eternal Son. He doesn’t have a human soul, a human mind, a rational human soul.
Well, as you can imagine, that was opposed. That actually was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 381. And one of his chief antagonists was Gregory of Nazianzus that I mentioned last time. And he made the observation that if he doesn’t have a human soul, if Jesus doesn’t have a human soul, then he’s not human. And if he’s not human, he’s not a second Adam. If he’s not a second Adam, he’s not a mediator. If we don’t have a mediator, we don’t have salvation. And so that was condemned. And an interesting statement was made during that time that has stuck with the church and theologians have used it ever since: “What is not assumed is not healed.” If the Son did not assume a full human nature, then human nature is not healed by Christ in his atoning works. That’s an important observation. So he has to be just what we are in order to be our representative before God.
Well, later there was another guy by the name of Nestorius. He affirmed the deity of Christ, affirmed the humanity of Christ, but he emphasized the distinction between these two in such a way that he made Christ end up being two persons—not one person in two natures, but two persons in one body. Now he actually denied that he said that, but there was no other way to take his language. He was condemned during his time; he has been condemned ever since because of the statements he made with regard to that. It was argued in answer to Nestorius that if we have two different persons, a human person and a divine person—keep in mind the distinction here: God the Son is the person. He has a divine nature from all eternity. And now in the incarnation he has assumed a human nature. One person, two natures. And so now in the incarnation, the eternal Son functions both through his divine nature and his human nature simultaneously. That’s the mystery of the incarnation. Nestorius now has said we end up with two different persons, not just two natures. Well, the problem with that, of course, is that if—and it was argued this way—if we have two persons, then it was just the humanity of Christ that suffered. And if it was just the humanity of Christ that suffered, then redemption is not a divine accomplishment. And everybody knows redemption has to be a divine accomplishment.
Well, there’s more to that, I’ll mention it a little bit as we go on. There’s another guy by the name of Eutyches, E-U-T-Y-C-H-E-S. I don’t know why they weren’t named Bill and Bob and Harry, but Eutyches is the guy we’ve got. He emphasized the unity of Jesus’ person to the point that he blurred the distinction between the two natures. And so in the incarnation, the Son became what? It formed a third kind of being. He swallowed up humanity and it became something better than human, but it’s not quite the same as human.
Now we’ve had reflections of that in recent years, a few decades ago. There was a big flap against John MacArthur from some fundamentalist quarters trying to make something out of—what many of the fundamentalists were trying to say was that Jesus had divine blood. It wasn’t just human blood; it was divine blood. Of course, the question is, what’s that? What’s divine blood? But what they had done is fallen into this Eutychian heresy that had been long condemned. And so there was this controversy over it. He denied, essentially, that Jesus truly shared in our humanity.
The Council Of Chalcedon In 451
All right, well, there are some of the challenges. How do you put these things together? We come to 431, and we have a council at Ephesus. They didn’t produce a creed. They affirmed the two natures of Christ. They denied that his humanity was swallowed up by his deity. They affirmed both the deity and the humanity of Christ. They condemned Nestorius. They affirmed Nicaea. But still, some more definition was needed.
And that brings us then to the Council of Chalcedon in 451. And you have that on your sheet: the Chalcedonian definition. Technically, the Chalcedonian statement is not a creed; it’s a definition. It’s sometimes referred to as the Chalcedonian Creed, but it’s really a definition that was given. It was intended to define Nicaea further and then give some of the specifics. All right, let’s read through it:
“Therefore, following the Holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regard his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood, begotten for us men and for our salvation of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristic of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God, the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed [that is the Nicene Creed] of the fathers has handed down to us.”
All right, let’s go through this quickly. “One and the same.” You see that three times in this paragraph. One and the same Lord. There’s continuity between the eternal Son and the man, Jesus. These are not two persons. It’s one and the same.
And the first section then deals primarily with the two natures of Christ. He’s deity and he is humanity. “At once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood.” Well, that says it. Completely God, completely man. Whatever it is to be God, he’s that. Whatever it is to be man, he’s that. Complete in Godhead, complete in manhood. Say it again: “Truly God and truly man. Consisting also of a reasonable soul and body.” You hear Apollinaris somewhere in the background there. “Of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead.” Notice again, there’s not an attempt to describe exactly what God is. It’s just that whatever God the Father is, that’s what the Son is also. The only difference being the relations. “At the same time of one substance with us regarding his manhood.” And then, “like us, in all respects, apart from sin.” That statement is heavily informed from Hebrews chapter 2, where the Scriptures tell us that plainly.
As regards his Godhead—alright, how is it the Son is God? As regards his Godhead, he’s begotten of the Father before the ages. It’s the eternal generation doctrine that we’ve seen. It’s essential to the Son’s deity. This is how the Son is distinct from the Father and yet divine himself. As regards his Godhead, he’s begotten of the Father before the ages. But yet as regards his manhood, begotten for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin. So he’s begotten of God eternally, before the ages. That’s his deity. Regarding his humanity, he was begotten of the Virgin Mary.
Now we come to this next one: “Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer.” Or as Roman Catholics like to translate it, the Mother of God, Theotokos. “Mother of God” is a little over-translated, but “God-bearer.” Is that a fair thing to say about Mary? Yes, it is. But keep in mind when this term was used, it was meant to affirm something about Jesus, not about Mary—or more than about Mary. And clearly it doesn’t mean she was the mother of Jesus in his divine nature. But yet Jesus, if he is divine, and then, as to his humanity, begotten of Mary, Mary becomes the God-bearer. This is what theologians call the communication of properties. What you can affirm of the nature, you can affirm of the person. So we have a song we sing like that. I think Charles Wesley had it right: “Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” Does God die? Of course not, not as to his divine nature. Was Jesus God? Yes. Did he die? Yes. As to his human nature, he died. But still, Jesus being God, you can say properly, “God died.” Now you might want to nuance that a little, be more careful and say, well, as to his human nature, he died. The divine nature did not cease to exist. He was still upholding all things by the word of his power and all of that. And the same with regard to Mary, the God-bearer. You might want to refine that a little and say, as to Jesus’ human nature, she was the God-bearer. But still, it is a term that is technically correct and we have to go with. Any question on that before we move on?
Yeah, Eric. There was a historical reason for it. First of all, Nestorius had denied it. It was a term in use. And Nestorius had denied it and didn’t want—he thought it compromised in some way the deity of Christ. And so it was important for them to acknowledge, if you’re gonna say that he is God, then you have to be able to say this, even though at the end of it, we still have to nuance it and be careful.
All right. Now the next part of the creed, we have some terminology used to describe Jesus in his two natures. Recognized in two natures, and here we have a lot of negative theology: without confusion, without change (that is Eutyches). Without confusion, that is, they don’t come together and form a third kind of nature. But we have two distinct natures without confusion. Without change; as to his deity, he remains divine even in his incarnation. The humanity that he assumes remains humanity in every sense without change. Without division, without separation; that is Nestorius, two separate persons. Without separation: two natures, one person. “The distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union.” God and man in one person, and the distinction between them is not annulled. They’re not confused, they’re not changed, they’re not divided, they’re not separated, and they’re not annulled, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one in the same Son and only begotten God, the Word, Lord Jesus Christ.
You notice here, one of the interesting features is what’s called, I mentioned a minute ago, negative theology. Not this, it’s not that, it’s not that, it’s not that, it’s not that. And often in attempting to define what at the end of the day is mystery, we sometimes are left to say what we cannot affirm. We can’t say this, we can’t say that, we can’t say the other. What we can say is this, but this negative theology becomes very important in order to ward off abuses, like some of the ones we’ve just surveyed, and also to define more precisely the reality of one person and two natures. So: without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, neither nature being annulled, but both being preserved in one person.
And then finally, at the end of the creed, they call a threefold witness for support: “even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed [that is Nicaea] of the fathers has handed down to us.”
Now one thing Chalcedon has done for us then is it’s established what has been recognized ever since: the boundaries of Orthodox Christology. On the one hand, he must be fully God, perfect deity. He must also be perfect humanity, fully human. Whatever it is to be human, he is that, body and soul. Third, the creed tells us these two natures must be one person, not two persons. But the two natures unite in such a way not as to create a third kind of being or two separate persons, but one person with two natures. And then fourth, the fourth boundary teaches us that the two natures must remain distinct: without change, without division, without separation, not annulling either, but the distinctions being preserved in one person. So, you know, they don’t mix together and make a third kind of being.
Well, that’s what Chalcedon has done for us. And again, that has been recognized by all branches of the church ever since: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant. The only difference would be somebody like Socinus, early on after the Reformation, the earliest liberal theologian, then later liberalism in the 19th century. You do have the oneness Pentecostals in the 20th century coming to life and denying the Trinity and so on. But this is what all branches of the church have agreed on ever since.
Now, after Chalcedon, there’s also other creeds that we could talk about, like the Athanasian Creed. We don’t know its original date. The Athanasian Creed is attributed to Athanasius, but it was not written by him. It was written later. It doesn’t have any what’s called conciliar authority; no council ever affirmed the Athanasian Creed, but it’s just been so widely used that it has kind of had that authority.
What’s The Role Of Creeds?
But let’s ask the question then, what’s the role of creeds? Why spend all this time—four weeks now we’ve done this—on the creeds? Why do we do that? It’s worth asking. And with that, first of all, we can ask: are the creeds authoritative? Well, the creeds are not the Bible. And the Bible is the only book I’m willing to say is infallible. But there is a reason why these early creeds have been recognized to be the standard statement of Orthodox Christology and Orthodox Trinitarian theology as well. They have been tried and tested and they’ve been proven. Each generation of Christians ever since has re-examined it and said, “That’s what says it.” It says it well and there’s nothing we can argue with in this. And so it has been recognized as a standard ever since the fourth and fifth centuries.
And they have certainly proved helpful to understand, to articulate truths that are at the end of the day above us, that we can’t really grasp entirely, and that was their original purpose. How do you say this? What can we affirm? What must we deny in order to affirm these mysteries that are revealed to us? And in that sense then, these creeds, I think, promote worship. The more you examine what has been revealed about God, the deeper you go, the more you recognize that you’re in over your head. And that’s where you learn to worship. And that’s true with regard to God as Trinity. It is true with regard to God the Son as human and divine. These are the two leading mysteries of the Christian faith.
And we might ask the question this way: how important is it that you know this? And in response, I think my first response would be: what part is not important for you to know? These are gospel essentials. Now, must you know it with the precision of a professional theologian? No, I’m glad to say you don’t have to do that. But what you want to know is as much as you can about this Savior who has come for us. We certainly don’t wanna say, “I wanna know as little about him as I possibly can and what I can get by with.” And in fact, the more you know about him in terms of what has been revealed, the more it generates worship. So I think in that sense, they are important. They do give definition. They give more clarity. They take us in deeper and give us a more precise understanding of what we can say, what we can’t say, and in the end, help us to adore God in all of his glory.
Now, there are later developments then. After these creeds in the coming centuries, the newest or the next big time of creedal development is what’s generally called confessions of faith, and that’s around the time of the Reformation. Let me list several of them for you here. We have the Augsburg Confession of Faith, that’s the Lutheran Confession, 1530. We have the First and Second Helvetic Confessions, that’s Lutheran, 1536 and 1562. We have the Confessions of Trent, that’s the Roman Catholic Confession of Faith in response to the Reformation in 1545 (and actually that went for a dozen years or so). We have the Scots Confession, that’s the Church of Scotland, 1560. We have the Belgic Confession, that’s Reformed, 1561. We have the 39 Articles, that’s the Anglican Confession of Faith in 1563. The Formula of Concord, that’s again a Lutheran Confession, 1577. We have the Arminian Confession of 1621. We have the Westminster Confession of Faith, that’s the Presbyterian Confession, 1646. We have the Dortrecht Confession, that’s the Anabaptist Confession, 1632. We have the 25 Articles of Religion, that’s the Methodist, 1784. And there are others as well. There’s the Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689, and so on.
In all of these now, we go a step further. In the early creeds, we tend to have, well, the emphasis is on the objective elements of the faith. Who God is, how he is triune, who the Son is, his two natures—these objective elements of the Christian faith. Now as we come to this point in history, let’s build on that and state more precisely what we believe. And so here we get into the nature of man, the nature of sin, the nature of the need, then the nature of salvation, how salvation is attained. And then the nature of the church, and also the nature of baptism, the ordinances, and things like that. And many times in these, these are denominational defining kinds of confessions. That would be another study for another time, maybe someday.
All right, so we have in Nicaea affirming the Trinity, affirming the relation of the Son to the Father—that’s the focus. Who is the Son with regard to the Father? He is consubstantial with him. We come to Constantinople in 381, and we have an affirmation of Nicaea with regard to what it affirms about the Son with a few more refining statements. Then in Constantinople, we also have an expansion on the part on the Holy Spirit: “We believe in the Holy Spirit.” And there’s a bolstering then in Constantinople of our understanding of the Trinity. And then we come to Chalcedon in 451. It defines for us the two natures of Christ as they relate in one person. And that has been our aside from Colossians chapter 1 and its high Christology.
Any questions on it? Yeah, Ian.
“I have a question about the Apostles’ Creed. I don’t know if you can answer that. I’m just curious. [Regarding ‘He descended into hell’] why did we add that?”
Actually, they probably didn’t add it; we deleted it. But now, I say it hesitantly because in the original Apostles’ Creed, it wasn’t there. The textual evidence behind that is it probably wasn’t there until the 6th century. And then there’s all kinds of discussion. What does that mean, “He descended into hell”? Are there ways to interpret that in a way that’s faithful to the New Testament? I think there is. But because it’s so controversial and it wasn’t part of the original, we just left it out.
Jim. I could tell by the way you raised your hand. No. There are different views of that. One is the harrowing of hell. He went and, you know, “Look what I did.” He triumphed over them in that sense. Another is that in his resurrection he proclaimed victory over the defeated spirits and so on. There’s some allusion to that actually in the epistles and the general epistles. Another way to take it is his descent is actually his incarnation. So in that sense, yes, but that’s another discussion. There’s actually been a brand new book written on that by a young theologian that I know and he’s done a really good job at that, but that’s gonna be another time.
All right, well, I got through with this a lot sooner than I expected. And I don’t think anyone will object if we dismiss early. If there are any questions, we’ll take that. Otherwise, Pastor Greg, would you dismiss in prayer, please?
Lord, we thank you for this wrap-up session to a review of the early church and especially the Orthodox Fathers of the church, coming to grips with error to the right and to the left, and putting down on paper what the Scriptures have revealed. We thank you for their faithfulness in their generation. And we pray that as we stand upon their shoulders and continue to be workmen in the Word of God, that you will help us to be faithful in our generations as well. Help us to appreciate both the positive building with the trowel and the defense of the faith with the sword. We ask your blessing now upon the remainder of our time, our fellowship together today in Jesus’ name.