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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.
Second Council of Nicaea - Week 2
| Sermon ID | 410122125416 |
| Duration | 41:39 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Language | English |
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