So for those of you who were paying attention last week, it was 787 was the second council of Nicaea, not 869. I was one council off. So I know. So there were a couple of issues that they dealt with at this council, and we talked at great length about this whole concept of iconoclasm. Went through our discussion of the second commandment and what the second commandment actually means in relation to making images of God. This is actually a quote from the church council and their ruling. And you'll notice I highlighted the last paragraph. The last paragraph says, indeed, the honor paid to an image traverses it, reaching the model, and he who venerates the image venerates the person represented in that image. So this is the Catholic Church at the time saying, praying to an image allows you to pray through an image. And honoring an image is the same thing as honoring who the image represents. Now, above that they say, certainly this is not the full adoration in accordance with our faith, which is properly paid only to the divine nature. But it resembles that. given to the figure of the honored and life-giving cross, and to the holy books of the Gospels, and other sacred cult objects. So, this is the point at which the Church starts to really descend into the concept of objects having in themselves some sort of holy nature, special nature, man-made or created things having holiness. Yes. As saints, it's kind of interesting because you could argue that that was really early on, that they took names like Peter and Paul and and gave them a higher standing. So, venerating them in that sense, you could say, from fairly early on in the church, they held them in a higher level of respect. The question of when did they start saying that the saints had power or Beneficence the ability to give you something or get something for you or a special channel to God That's a really good question, I don't know I don't know the answer for that question It was before this point in time I believe But I would have to do some research into when the first documents were found that referred to that specifically I So we know it was sometime after the Gospels, because it's not in there. OK, so what did they declare? These are the declarations of anathema or the excommunications produced by the council. If anyone does not confess that Christ our God can be represented in his humanity, let him be anathema. Anyone says that you can't make an image of Christ, then they're out of the church. If anyone does not accept representation in art of evangelical scenes, let him be anathema. So if you don't like the Lord's Supper by Da Vinci or the Sistine Chapel, okay, both of those happen after this, but out of the church. If anyone does not salute such representations as standing for the Lord and His saints, let him be anathema. So not only do you have to accept that we're going to make these images, you have to have the understanding that these images are true representations of these things on earth. Otherwise, out of the church. And here's the fun one. As if the other three weren't. If anyone rejects any written or unwritten tradition of the church, let him be anathema. With that one sentence, they declared gospel, they declared equal with scripture, all of the historic tradition of the church. You can no longer question the church. If you disagree with the traditions of the church, you're out. Okay? So that's what they decided with the Second Council of Nicaea. So, we have a problem. Second Council of Nicaea is an ecumenical council. That is, it's recognized to be a general council of the church, and this general council of the church has declared all of us to be excommunicated because we would disagree with those statements. So we need an understanding of doctrine that will allow us to agree with the things that the first few councils said, and accept them as statements of biblical position, and yet disagree strongly with what this council says. How do you handle the councils of the church? This comes from the Scottish Confession of Faith of 1560. A rather quickly written document. It was three days or something like that. Scottish Confession. It was very quick. This isn't the whole document, right? Now, it wasn't anywhere near as comprehensive as the Westminster Confession of Faith, but At the time, somebody, the king at the time, I believe, asked a couple of Scottish ministers to set down a confession of faith against which he could judge heresy. And they put together this document. John Knox, I believe, was in the creation of this document. As we do not rashly damn that which godly men assembled together in general councils, lawfully gathered, have proponed unto us, so without just examination dare we not receive whatsoever is obtruded unto men under the name of general counsels." In English, you can't blow off what a general counsel says. Rashly damn you can't blow it off on the other hand You can't wholeheartedly accept it just because it was said by a general counsel For plain it is as they were men so have some of them manifestly aired and that in matters of great weight and importance I So far then as the council proves the determination and commandment that he gives by the plain word of God, so far do we reverence and embrace the same. But if men, under the name of a council, pretend to forge unto us new articles of our faith, or to make constitutions repugning to the word of God, then utterly we must refuse the same as the doctrine of devils, which draws our souls from the voice of our only God to follow the doctrines and constitutions of men." Men make mistakes. It's obviously apparent in some of the general counsel rulings we've seen in the past. And if we see that they've made mistakes, then it's not a counsel of God. And therefore, it must be passed out. And what is the standard to determine whether or not this counsel is in error? They're trying to do one of two things. Forge unto us new articles of our faith. What's that? OK. Add something to the confession. Add something to our core doctrine. Trying to make something new in the religion. Or Make constitutions reputing to the word of God. If what they declare is in violation with Scripture. It's wrong. Yes. This document is actually written 600 years later, and I had to go 600 years or so to get a good statement of it. The splintering occurs long before this. This document was written after Luther, after Geneva and Calvin. And John Knox is in Scotland. So this is during the Reformation period, but it's after the split of the church, which happens from this point in time is about 350 years in the future. From the point in time that the Nicaea II takes place is about 350 years. And then after Nicaea II, then There's a split at 1054, and then there's a couple more councils, the Lateran councils, which we'll talk about. And then after that is when you start running into Luther and that sort of thing. So this document itself that we're looking at is long after the church has been attacked. And the question is, okay, the church has been attacked, it's been splintered into a whole bunch of reformer groups, and there's a whole bunch of doctrines and positions. Every group claims that it is the true church. Right. You have to be able to trace your ancestry if you are the church. The church was founded. With Adam and Eve. And the church maintains continuum. Throughout the ages, despite Right. We see this pattern in Israel falling into sin, being restored, falling into sin, being restored. And yet God preserves his church, his people through all of that. And so in the modern era, these churches are saying, yes, well, the Catholic Church, the Roman Latin Church fell into apostasy. The Reformation restored that. That was the restoration cycle. But the problem was, when the Restoration happened, when the Reformation happened, it didn't happen to the Catholic Church. The Reformation was rejected by the Catholic Church. And so this body of people, the Catholic Church, remained in existence. And so the Reformation was not a united group. There's a whole bunch of people speaking out against the evils of the Catholic Church and the apostasy of the Catholic Church, but they all got into this position of having to establish their own doctrine, their understanding of doctrine, recognizing the fact that the Catholic Church had wrong doctrine. It has to be corrected, but we don't all agree on the corrections. And so you have the Luther, and you have the Anabaptist, and you have the Presbyterian, and you have all these different branches of the church. Some of them are very close in thought. Close enough, in fact, that the Westminster Confession was able to be written that was not written by Presbyterians. It was written by all of the churches in England, essentially, getting together, and saying, what's the solid statement of faith? We're still holding to it. All of them stopped, but but there's this whole issue of. What is the true church? Can you tie back to the true church? OK, and dealing with that, one of the issues that you have to deal with is how long was the Catholic Church, the true church? As we start seeing these things like Nicaea 2 happening in the official documentation of the church, they're writing things that we consider to be heresy. It's a general counsel of the church. So you have to deal with this. How do you deal with? We accept the wisdom of a general counsel. And what it represents, the leaders of the church getting together and agreeing on their understanding of doctrine. What a wonderful thing. And yet, sometimes, it's loony. It's completely wrong. So if you accept the authority, as the Catholic Church does, the inerrant authority of an ecumenical council, then you can't throw this out. The Catholic Church can't let this go. Because it's part of an ecumenical council. Okay? All right. Now we get to 869 AD. The fourth council of Constantinople. The note down there at the bottom, this is the last council, the last general council that occurs before the Great Schism. It's the last time that the church gets together. before they completely split, the East and the Western Churches split. And what was it meaning about? Well, it meant to condemn Photius. Photius was proclaimed the Patriarch of Constantinople by the Emperor Michael III after he deposed Ignatius. So Michael III, Holy Roman Emperor based out of Constantinople, Went to the local church and kicked out the leader of the local church, Ignatius, and chose another guy, Photius, and installed him as the Patriarch of Constantinople. The church met and deposed him. Why did they depose him? Well, he opposed celibacy. He disagreed with the doctrine of the Catholic Church that the leaders of the church should remain celibate. Anyone who is ordained must remain celibate. And he opposed the filike, which we'll talk about in just a second. The Roman Church did not recognize Photius or the authority of Michael III to depose Ignatius. So here's this issue. All of the general counsels have been called by the emperor. Don't mention that here. The next one is even more clear. this issue of the church and the state and what authority the state has in the execution of the church. If the Holy Roman Empire is a biblical leadership, then doesn't the king have the authority to appoint the leaders of the church? Well, up until this point, they did. Michael, the third, went in and said, you're out, you're in. I'm the emperor, I'm the Holy Roman Emperor. You're out, you're in. The Roman Church, which again, Rome, not Constantinople, this is an east-west issue. The Roman Church said, The emperor in Constantinople doesn't have the authority to depose someone who we authorized in Rome. Hmm. OK, so the last council before the Great Schism. Now, this whole issue of the filike. Remember the Nicene Creed? That short little two sentence. Statement of faith that was from Nicaea one This is what it looks like now or at least at this point in time The Philake if you look Three-quarters of the way down in the middle of the page. Let's see the words in bold and the Sun The great heresy in the church at this point in time was This sentence and in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life who proceeded from the father and the son. Who with the father and the son together is worshipped and glorified. The question was, does the Holy Spirit proceed from the father? Or does the Holy Spirit proceed from the father and the son? And so the Eastern Church. Which? disagreed with the statement and the Sun was in conflict with the Western Church. The Western Church agreed with the statement and the Sun. And so this was a major conflict between the two halves of the church as to whether the Nicene Creed is correctly stated with or without the words and the Sun in that paragraph. Yes. Good question. What does it mean? Who proceeded from the father and the son? Do we agree with this statement or do we not agree with it? Who proceeded from the father and the son? That's our statement. OK, so what does it mean? It's not TCF statement. Why isn't it TCF statement? TCCS is the RP mission in Cyprus, or actually the church in Cyprus. Why don't they say it? Because they're in the east. Seriously. I'm not sure that our denomination would fight for either of those statements, quite frankly. with or without and the son. I wouldn't. I'll tell you why I wouldn't. I don't think there's any difference. OK, wasn't me. I don't think there's any difference. I equate the father and the son. I don't see a problem with uniting them in a clause. as opposed to dividing them in a clause. The Holy Spirit is sent by. The father. The Holy Spirit is sent by the son. That's it. But was he sent by one or the other or both? Well, you can find both passages in scripture. I'm going and I'm sending someone to you. My father will send to you. OK, they're both in scripture. This was not the only thing that the church divided over, but it was an incredibly divisive issue, even to the point that today the true Nicene Creed is different in the east and the west. They disagree. Yes. I don't think so. Well, again, we went back to the concept of where did these individual clauses come from, right? Nicaea first came out with a very simple statement of faith, and then these heresies would come up, and people would say, you know, we need something added to the Nicene Creed to cover the fact that we need a better understanding and a better explanation of who Christ is in relation to the Father. in the Nicene Creed. So they would add a clause about the nature of Christ. And then, well, what about the Holy Spirit? How does the Holy Spirit work in the whole concept of the Trinity? So we need to add some clauses and explanation of who the Holy Spirit is. That's it. Yes? Right. Right. Right. He says he says from the father. I think there's a second place where he says I'm from the father and the son. Right. Right. And that's partly where the confusions come from scripture, because the scripture has both. So if the scripture has both, are either of them wrong? Right. I wasn't actually aware of that. They retranslated that I seen Creed. Fair enough. Is there? Is there significance to the Nicene Creed? Is there significance to the Nicene Creed? Here's the issue, okay? I don't want to get hung up in the wording of the Nicene Creed because it's a document written by men just like every other document written by men. I think it's a good, solid statement of faith. It's not the gospel. I don't have a problem with saying it, because I don't see anything in there that I have a major objection to. But if I give you a statement of my faith, I'm not going to say the Nicene Creed to you. a man-made nature, a doctrine or something to stand between. And as a result, we allow ourselves and give... give ourselves the ability to disagree vehemently with someone enough that we can go about our own way. And it seems to me that that's what the East and West Church have done. They've taken something that in and of itself It was much more political than anything, right? The actual schism was primarily a political schism. Because the center of the church was at Rome, and then it was at Constantinople, and the people in Rome didn't like losing, being the center of the church, and then they didn't agree with the decisions that were coming out of Constantinople, and then who's really in charge, and so they just got into this spat, fighting amongst themselves, and that's what led to the division. But when you get into that mode, You start looking for anything that you can pick on that the other guy did that you disagree with and the idea that somebody would come and change the Nicene Creed, the Nicene Creed that was established by our fathers. How can you alter one of the foundational documents of the church? Aha, I have a post to stick in the ground for why you guys are heretics. Okay. So that was 869 Constantinople IV. Yes? I was trying to remember your name. I just remembered. Rashtun. Rashtun is the only person I've ever read that tells the difference between the East and West as far as it works out in terms of a procession of the Father, a procession of the Son from the Father, procession of the Holy Spirit. from both or just one. And he says it has to do with the fellowship that developed in the Western Church that you don't have in the Eastern Church. You have a patriarchy system in the Eastern Church. And if you visit there, you can pick that up. But... They would then translate the... They would then translate that, the processional nature where the father was over both, as opposed to it being a one... That's right. That's a patriarchal idea. And... And they translated that into the hierarchy of their... Yeah, and some people have said that has a lot to do with the patriarchy in the family, that the Western churches tended to lose. That's just an implication. I thought you'd be interested at least in knowing that some people say there is a practical difference. The Eastern Church would say there is. Well, I would hope so, because they divided over it. Yes. Demonstrates itself, I think, is women's suffrage. Who may vote? That's a political issue. It's a political issue. First was in the church. Does the father vote? Does the father-mother vote? And it's also, do women vote or does the home vote? And I think the East-West, it comes down into society. Oh sure, and the Saracens were rising at the time, it was very much, yeah, there was a tremendous amount of culture clash between the two, and the Latin and the High Latin was definitely different than the Greek. Very different philosophical basis, culturally, culturally, for the two sides of the church. Greek philosophy versus Latin, Roman, yeah. It's in the, when you learn the language, modern Greek, he is in the nominative, she's in the genitive, meaning belonging to him. And it's woven into their language. So the picture actually comes out that even though they don't practice it much. Completely different question. Actuality. OK, moving on, and it is my hope that now that we've gotten through the councils that we would agree with in the particular areas where we saw major divides in the church, that we're going to start traveling through some of these later councils a little more quickly and start getting to the Reformation where some of the fun stuff happens. Ladder in one. Yes. When we hit the Reformation, I'm pretty much going to stop paying any attention to the councils at all. So, yeah, we've got we've got a few hundred years to go before we hit the Reformation, but it's not that far away in our church time. because I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on the later councils. I'm just going to mention them so that we can kind of stay abreast of history as we pass through. But then once we get to Luther, then the councils of the church become much more significant as far as we're concerned. So I may bounce back to them from time to time when we look at particularly momentous decisions of the Catholic Church moving forward, but yes. The second paragraph in this particular thing, in this document, I copied the whole thing in because I think the whole thing has value. The second paragraph is, if we don't believe that councils are authoritative because of who they are, why do we have councils at all? Right? In other words, if we don't give councils this overarching authority the way that the Catholic Church does, because they've made doctrine, then why have a council at all? Why would you bother having a council if you can't get a group of men together and know that they're going to be right? Why get them together? Why do we have Synod? Why does Synod make rulings on doctrines? They do, you know. Why bother? If we know that they might be wrong, what's the point? And that's what the second paragraph speaks to. The cause, then, why general counsels convened was neither to make any perpetual law, which God had not made, nor yet to forge new articles of our belief, neither to give the word of God authority, much less make that to be his word, or yet the true interpretation of the same, which was not before by his holy will expressed in his word. Got it? But the cause of councils, we mean such as merit the name of councils, was partly for confutation of heresies, so challenging heresies, for giving public confession of their faith to the posterity following, Nicene Creed, public confession of faith, which they did both by the authority of God's written word and not by any opinion or prerogative that they could not err by reason of their general assembly. And this we judge to have been the chief cause of general counsels. The other was for good policy and order to be constituted and observed in the Kirk, in which, as in the house of God, it becomes all things to be done decently and into order. Not that we think that any policy and one order in ceremonies can be appointed for all ages, times, and places. For as ceremonies, such as men have devised, are but temporal, so may and ought they to be changed. when they rather foster superstition than they edify the Kirk using the same. Three purposes for a general counsel. Discipline, confession, and order. That's what the statement says. Why do we have general counsels? Why do we have a synod? Discipline, right? It's a court of the church. It's a judicial function. Senate. Confession, that is, getting together to publicly state what we believe to be the truth about the Word of God. Not creating new doctrines. Not adding to the Word of God. stating what we believe to be the truth about the Word of God. And order. Churches, being man-made institutions, need to perform decently in order the things that they do, and therefore, it falls upon the general councils to lay down what decently in order looks like. Okay? That's the second paragraph. Questions on that? Okay. I'm gonna end on time today. I look forward to seeing you all this evening as we continue with an ordination and installation service. So it will be an enjoyable time celebration in the church. Let's look together in prayer. Father in heaven, we thank you for the beauty of your word. We thank you for the diligence of those who have studied it before us. Pray, Lord, that you would open our hearts and our minds to what we read and what we see. Help us to as we are challenged to by Paul, Study the teaching that were presented with against your word and use your word as the true standard for what is true and what is right. Lord pray that we would strive diligently to keep the faith and to hold true to what is taught in your word. And we ask Lord that we would take the knowledge that we have that you have given us through the education and enlightening of the Holy Spirit. and that we would apply that diligently to our lives, that we would live out your word in truth. We ask these things in Christ's name, that he would be glorified through our words and our deeds. Amen.