There is a lot more writing on this, but we're tackling two heretics. There was a lot of infighting, and we're going to see the politics behind this. I'm going to try not to bleed over into the history of fake Christianity, where people were taking on the name, where if you remember the early church, they were persecuted for taking the name of Christ. As the centuries went on, it became beneficial to have the name of Christ, because now you got the backing of the empire, the church, money came with that, especially if you were, like Charlemagne, everybody hears that name, he was a Christian ruler. No, he took on that name because he needed money to fund his war. The church has a lot of money. I will take on the name of Christianity so And I see I'm already rambling on about that because it interests me. It's it's interesting history but we're gonna look at this portion in the church where there's a lot of infighting over the natures of Christ and Before we get looking at paper. You guys can help me out. See if you remember some of these names remember Apollinarius and Apollinarianism do you remember what the heresy was that he was responsible for and You're going to make me mess up my spelling again here, Dan. Did the divine nature of Christ replace the human mind and will? So there was two natures, but the humanity yielded to the divinity, so it was basically controlled more like a puppet. So there was two natures, but it was a very skewed understanding. And again, he wasn't setting out to make a heresy. He was setting out to counter those who said that Christ was only spirit and not real as well. But he did not want to make him only a man like the Ebionites did. So who remembers Arius? Arianism. Yeah, what's the heresy on that though? Remember our Jehovah's Witness is the modern Arianist. Christ was created. He was not eternal. He was created a long time before anything was created, but he was not eternal, so they take away that eternal divinity, is what Arianist did. Manny, other than the cucumbers. I heard you were unfamiliar with the conversation of cucumbers, so you got a crash course in it. It was a great class. Remember Manny? And docetism, kind of being the same thing, what are these things responsible for? I didn't hear anything you said, but... Well, yes, but let's think about the attributes of Christ here, the natures of Christ, this is the battling. Was he physical? Think of the docetist as well. It was all spiritual, right? Then he appeared to be a man, but there was no humanity. So it was a skewed version of divinity, but I'll call that a divinity and no humanity. Then again, the physical, that comes with the nature of humanity was corrupt, evil, bad, spiritual, good. So these are just some of the predecessors of this infighting that we're going to see in the church. Apollinarius wanted to show that, yes, Christ was an actual person. He was not just a spiritual. But unlike the Ebonites, who said he was a real person but not divine, he wanted to show the divinity of Christ. So in his desire to uphold the divinity of Christ, made a heresy in his teachings. Arius kind of jumped off of some of the other, jumped off of one of his ideas too with the sun and then the created. So okay, yes, The Son is begotten of the Father, so He's created. And that led to His whole heresy. Lesser version than what the Jehovah's Witnesses have today, but it was still a heresy. And these other two with the lack of humanity. With who we discussed last week, remember those heresies? Wasn't about Christological, but you remember? That's okay. Important thing is, He was a One of the church fathers that was a defender of the faith. And even towards the end of his career, though, started getting into some areas that were more questionable. But he stood fast against these doctrines of heresy. And the Council of Chalcedon is where we're going to get this final confession and creed that we look at here tonight. But the two main characters that we're going to be discussing are Eutychus and Nestorius. Okay, and so I've got just a little biography for them. Nestorius, he was an archbishop in Constantinople. And you can read through this on your own. I've got Cyril of Alexandria on here because he's actually the person responsible for eventually causing the Eutychus. heresy and that's not how it set out to be though but this man who's branded the father of this heresy was nothing more than the mouthpiece that they used to go in and speak against Nestorius and then he retreated again to his teachings but his name is the one that's tagged on with it. So here's where the boring history of the world comes in. Mediterranean Sea. That's the boot. So hopefully you recognize the boot as Italy. All right, especially since I put Rome here. All right, so remember we had the Western and the Eastern. So if you're familiar with the history of the Empire like I was, the Roman Empire, and then the capital got moved to Constantine and then eventually it split, so we had an Eastern and a Western Roman Empire. Okay, well the church went along those lines as well. So the four main powers in the church during this time, the latter part of the 5th century, Rome, and they've already established the Catholic Church in their Pope lines. So Leo the Great is the one during this time, Leo the Great. I've got Pope, I think, in parentheses there because he was titled that, but I'm going to call him a bishop because all these others are bishops. All right, so Rome, the big powerhouse, they had a lot of pull, and they could appeal to emperors because that's where the capital of the empire was, is, and back and forth. Then Nestorius was the bishop in Constantinople. So where you have the Constantine part of the empire and the Rome part of the empire, so these were two main powers in the church. But then you had the educational part, so that's where the powers were as far as political power and the governments went. But then you had these two schools, and that's kind of where we get the idea of school of thought. So we had two, Alexandria, which is in northern Africa, in Egypt, Okay, and that's where Cyril is a bishop. All right, and I've got the next 200 because when Cyril passed away, Dioscorus became the bishop and it was him that kind of polluted Eutychus and then Eutychus just went on his own and just, you know, here's what I said, I said it by, but we'll get into that though. And then Antioch over here and he's not a big player, but just to give you the bishop at that time, Theodorette was in Antioch. So Antioch and Alexandria were the two education areas. This is where these schools of thought, these doctrines, Policy is understanding the church and the doctrines of God, Scripture, Christ. This is where they did a lot of the de-educating, the getting together, the coming up with these things. And the two schools of thought that came from this is Alexandria emphasized the unity of Christ's natures. Alright, so while everybody in the Christendom agreed, Christ had a human and a divine nature. Alexandria was stressing the unity of these, whereas Antioch was stressing the distinctions. Okay, and this is why it gets important because, again, trying to defend scripture and the attributes of God, specifically in the person of Christ, and they're going to run into these problems. Again, politics is what politics are. So, I don't like this group over here. I want to push them out, so we're going to hold a council. As it was in Astorius, And his distinctions, like I said, he fell into the school of Antioch, but he was the bishop in Constantinople, so he had some power there, but he was very much into the distinction in Christ's natures, whereas Eutychus and his group were more into the unity. So, just looking at this idea they had, how can the immutable, eternal God be joined with a mutable, historical man? We were joking about that and music today, you know, I don't want to answer questions because you're gonna ask me to explain this Well, this is what these bodies were trying to come up with though. We want to honor our God and teach property about him So, how do we reconcile this immutable eternal God his divine nature with a mutable historical man? Because he was both so how do we Reconcile these how do we put these together? How do we join these these ideas together? So they had the divine nature human nature Some as I put there come up with a third nature kind of like what Apollinarius did All right, he didn't come up with a third nature though. He just said that the divine parts replaced some of the human parts So it was kind of a a hybrid take the Lego head off of this person and put it on that person kind of a thing And then of course gonna finish with the Chalcedonian definition and But as I said, the Alexandria had Cyril, Dioscorus, and then Eutychus, Antioch had Theodoret, Rome, and we're gonna see how this even plays out, how Leo up in Rome is gonna be battling one of them, but then when the other side starts getting swayed, like that's also wrong. So these men were diligently trying to be correct in their understanding of God. This was not, and like you asked that, what if somebody's confronted with it? But when you start getting politics behind it, you see how much of the known world, this is small to us. Even though it's not drawn to scale, this is a small portion of, the church, the global church, as we know it today in 2022. That's a small portion, but you see how much power was just in this little region here around the Mediterranean. That was the entirety of the power that the church had. And I don't like looking at the church as power, but in the early building of the church, this is where doctrine came from. This is where solid thinking came from. And eventually, in a small area, we're going to see a reformation come from that. So it's important to understand the history. And as I said, Constantinople with Nosorius. And I have on there, where am I at there? Yes, so I have on there this emphasis, this is from that book, Know the Heretics. Again, if you, we have the videos, if you wanna read the book, the guy does a great job. He's Anglican, so some of his leanings, you definitely see him leaning more towards the high church like that, which I'm okay with, but, you know, let's take that with a grain of salt, but he does a fantastic job on the history. It says, this emphasis led to a distinction between the infinite Godhead and the finite humanity in the person of Christ. Both schools tended to be misunderstood by the other side. The Antiochian position tended to be misconceived as teaching that Christ was two persons, while the Alexandrian emphasis drew accusations of monophysitism, the heresy that Jesus had merged divine and human nature. Okay, so one nature there. So Eutychus is what we're going to look at there first. Because Eutychus is battling. It's in Asturias. They're going to have the council. The first council of Ephesus. Emperor saying, hey, fix this problem. This guy's talking about two natures, making Christ into two people. All right, so they go to battle it. Well, Cyril was very much against it, wants to battle him, sending papers, and they send Eutychus to speak on their part. You're wrong. But then Eutychus gets into his own problems there. He's got this third nature of Christ, so not the same essence as humanity. What happens is he explains it so like the divine is an ocean and the humanity is a drop of wine. being put into the ocean. So it's now a part of the ocean, but the divine is so much bigger and the humanity is just a little part of it. So overemphasizing this, but not to take away from the humanity makes them into one nature. And this is a problem in people not trying to speak incorrectly. They say, yes, Christ was two natures before the incarnation. We all agree on that. And then they wouldn't go any further. Well, that opens the door. Yes, before the incarnation, he was two. After the incarnation, he's one. Is it the divine or is it the humanity? Well, it's this ocean with a drop of wine into it. And again, thinking on what he's thinking, divine is... unfathomable, right? So in his mind, the divine nature would have to be like an ocean, whereas humanity is such a small little thing. It's got to be a drop. So it made them two different substances, but combining together. So this is where he's trying to be correct in his thinking and stepping into heresy. He wanted to avoid the era of docetism. All right, so there was divinity and no humanity, but he's still putting these two natures together and forming a third. So this is what some of the, like I say, Cyril and others like this is not, Cyril didn't start out that way. He just wanted to go against Nestorius and his two natures. And then Nestorius, and I say Eutychus is basically a pawn. He was just a arch monk, you know, he was in charge of making the beer or whatever monks did back then, I don't know. But they used him and he's the one who went to speak and ended up, in his own words, making a heresy with this one nature after. So he did. All right. That is a heresy. Okay. We're gonna back over to Nestorius, though, and what he did trying to, he knew this was a heresy. Remember, it's easier to know what it's not than what it is. So you're looking at a doctrine. What is the two nature, what is the incarnation? I know what it's not, it's not this. All right, so what is it? Well, now I'm going to step into my own heresy. And a problem he had, though, and I know I hear it a lot because I love my old supervisor who retired, We got to a conversation one day about images and you know Jesus. Well, I'm like, you know, yeah, we don't have any images of God No, not God Jesus. Like well, Jesus is God. No. No, he's the Son of God Yeah, well who's Mary mother of God, okay, so Mary's the mother of God her son is Jesus Who's the Son of God, but he's not God. How's that work? Well, it's he's maybe he's both and So even in the way you're taught from a lot of these errors, most people don't understand. I would argue that most Protestants couldn't explain or have an understanding of what that looks like. But that phrase, mother of God, he had a problem with. Speaking of marriage. He had no problem saying that Mary was the same substance as humanity. Humanity. I'm gonna scribble that up so you can't see my misspelling there again. All right, no problem with that, but he couldn't picture, and he misspoke at one of the councils they had too, where he said, I cannot worship a three-month-old baby. All right, so wait a minute, but you agree that Christ was, Jesus was a three month baby. He is the eternal God. You're saying you wouldn't worship him. So what he was trying to say though, was he couldn't picture calling her the mother of God, that the divine always existed and calling her the mother meant that she was the creator of the divine. So he was okay with mother of Christ. which in itself led to battle. Oh, you're denying Christ's divinity because you're not calling Mary the mother of God. Has nothing to do with the argument, but politics jumping into it. Yes, we're going to say this. He wanted to stress the two natures of Christ, though. She is the mother of Christ, the incarnate, the two human and Divine nature is being melded together in the Incarnation, but not the Mother of God. He had a very big problem with that. I don't even like that phrase, but I'm also from Catholic, so I just pass it off as, I know who you're speaking of when you say Mother of God. But I also understand Nosorius, like, yeah, I'm not comfortable with that. The Mother of God kind of implies looking at, especially with Greek gods and stuff like that, oh, Hera is the mother of these, so I understand that that's not something that he wanted to have. So he battled that, but he wanted to very much have the distinctions completely divine person and a completely human person. And again, he wanted to avoid the errors of Arianism, and he wanted to avoid the error of Manichaeism. Okay, where Arianism mingled human and divine parts of Jesus, as did Apollinarius, because those two kind of copied from each other. And then Manichaeism denied the humanity of Christ. So he was battling two heresies. And remember we said that before, these men are seeking out, not to create a heresy to start a new sect, but they were trying to counter a previous heresy. I'm turning this back on, sorry guys. All right, so again, they're setting out to battle previous heresies. All right, and this is all taking place within pretty close together there. So we saw that in the early 1st century. We had the apostles passing off to what we have the early church fathers. Then the 2nd and 3rd century, we started seeing questions coming in of the Trinity. Is it a Unitarian God or is it a Trinitarian God? And then a century later, now we're having the battle over Christ, His natures. Is He truly divine or truly human or a third or both or how do you explain that? I'm going to get some questions going from you guys, but another response from that great book is, "...for he who is true God is also true man. And in this union there is no lie, since the humility of manhood and the loftiness of the Godhead both meet there. For God is not changed by the showing of pity, so man is not swallowed up by the dignity. For each form does what is proper to it with the cooperation of the other." And this is from Leo, Leo the Great, one of his letters to Flavian. I'd say he wrote a lot of stuff, too, because he wanted to. Look, I know that this guy is slightly wrong here, but this guy's way wrong. Great, now we're going too far this way, and I want to take on this. So even Cyril in politicking, the first council, the Ephesus council, they basically had the meeting without him. So hey, this guy who's getting ready to show up, he's a heretic. Everybody agree? All right. Hey, too late, man. We already voted. You're done. And the second one, they called it even the robber's senate because nobody from the opposition was there. And then again, the next one, they start getting into more like, well, our support is looking like they're being threatened here. In fact, during that second one, people were said, you know, Burnham. It's like, yeah, I'm not with this guy. Hey, weren't you? Nope. Jim who? I have no idea who you're talking about. So it got pretty bad and political. Someone wanted to squash, as I said, our school is better than your school. Well, if we can, and that's where this came in, if we can get rid of that Antioch idea, then it's all going to be Alexandrian mindset in the whole church. And so they were pushing for that. But it didn't start out with, let's battle. It started out with, we're trying to counter these previous ones. And we're against this. Yeah, so are we. But you guys said that. Well, we're against that, too. We're saying the same thing. Talking past each other. And then some other things. Well, I'm going to battle this phrase right here. So in order to do that, I'm going to have serious distinctions in the two natures. She cannot be the mother of God because the divine nature of Christ is eternal. Is there anything wrong with that statement? You have a problem if somebody said, I disagree with the phrase mother of God. Because she could not be the mother of something that was in existence for eternity before she was even created. I understand where somebody saying that would come from. Yeah, you know what, you're right. How can she be the mother of the eternal? I wouldn't pick a fight over it. It could be a nice conversation to have, but no, we're gonna pick a fight and we're gonna use this phrasing or you're wrong. So this is just how the battles picked up. And then the Chalcedonian definition before we get into some conversation. You guys look very scared to have any conversation coming up, but I promise it'll be fun and edifying. This is just a part of the Chalcedonian definition, again on these natures of Christ. The distinction of natures was in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence. Anybody want a picture of the scale? I shall leave it up there for a minute. So we have the Son of God. Son of God, one of the three persons in the Godhead, eternal, not created. Begotten of the Father, not created. Those creeds and confessions before did a fantastic job, but we have the Son of God and eternity past. In time, we have the incarnation. How does this make sense? Despite their rivalry, both sides were seriously trying to understand how Christ saves humankind, and the questions they raised are worth deep consideration. How human was Christ? What's that? Truly? What does Christ mean? We say Christ. I know you hear a joke sometimes, that's not his last name. It's not Jesus Christ, like Jim Schnapp. That's not what it is. All right, the Christ, Christ Jesus, Lord Christ Jesus, Lord Jesus Christ. What is Christ? Right, Christ, the anointed one, Messiah. So, just trying to throw that word up there because the Son of God, Jesus, Two natures. Divinity and humanity. To form the Christ. And see how he said, to form the Christ. This is what they're trying to look at. Well, how does that make sense? Did he form the Christ? Form seems to be a... He existed and then was created in time, which is where we start getting the Arius view. Alright, well, no, no, no. Jesus was born and at some time, God gave him the divinity. Oh, that's adoptionism. See people trying to answer this question. You see how they're coming up with these others. So, if we were in the early church right now, and if it was our job to study and discuss these things of Christ, how would you come up with this? What would you say? Well, is there unity in the two natures? Is there one person or two persons? because I'm not going to draw a figure to represent the divine there. So there's two people, and you have this human, and then you have this divine, and so there are two people. So the distinction of Christ's nature starts getting to the extreme, and it's now two persons. But then you have the other side there, where the natures are together. And it's this new thing, like that ocean with the drop of wine. Or demigod, and that's why I really, it's hard to not see some of the previous heresies, and they're trying to understand this. Like, well, no, we don't want it to be two persons because that's a heresy. Like, okay, well, you're making it one nature here now, so you're taking away either the divinity or the humanity, so you're creating heresy. Well, where's the middle ground? This was political. This was infighting in the church. They were trying to come up with a consensus. Some for power reasons. They wanted their school to be the authority in the church. Others because, no, this is wrong. I say, even reading the history, you're like, oh, Leo was against Nestorius. Wait a minute, Leo's now yelling at Eutychus. What's going on here? Because they were both wrong. I'm not saying he had it all together either, or even Athanasius. I love the battles he had, but he was still a little bit off in some areas. So these men tried their hardest to be faithful to what they believed God wanted us to know about him and his nature, especially in Christ. So you said, I asked how human was Christ and you said fully and truly. Is he human like this? Is he human like this? It's hard to describe, right? Would you say that either of those are correct? No! Absolutely right, because you'd be a heretic if you thought either of those was correct. Did his humanity dilute or mask his divinity? So we can again see what it's not. Did his divinity interfere with the effectiveness of his sacrifice? And this again is where some of the problem came in. And I love my sons questioning, you know, Jesus died. Yes he did, Jesus died. Can God die? Or was Jesus God? Or is Jesus God? I mean being a heretic here. I justify that. Well, I like the response there, for each form does what is proper to it with the cooperation of the other. And the confession even said that each nature acts according to the nature of Christ, according to its nature. The divine acts according to its divine. The divine nature cannot die. But He was also, as you said, truly man. And that doesn't change that. You're saying that God died, so He must not have been all divine. Can't explain it. What I can explain is that there are two natures in one person. Not two natures with two persons looking like one person. Not two natures coming together making a third one so they mingle together. The more I think about his, I say out of the mouths of babes, and I know he was being smart and doesn't remember saying this, but that is crazy. How do you do that? How do we look at this? How can Christ, the Divine, died for us, and that comes into the whole salvation questions there. So, this is where I want us to have our discussion here, though. The importance of this. Why did Christ need to die? We can argue, do you think Christ actually died? Some people know it was just, you know, it appeared He died. He appeared to suffer. God can't suffer. You know, well, I understand what you mean, that we understand the impassibility of God. He can't experience the way we do. So, you're correct. but he's humanity too. He's divinity and humanity. So I have no problem saying yes, Jesus, son of God, died. All right? Why? Is it important? For our salvation, is that important? Was his death necessary for us to attain salvation? Can you give me a why? For our sins? Could we do that though? Yeah, well, that's something that most of these heretics agree with, though. Yes, salvation is a grace of God. But how is that grace applied? Is it because of the sacrifice? Or, as we saw last week, is it because of my own actions, my works based here that are, you know, giving my ability, my grace growing to be saved? Who is our sin against? Eternal. Does it matter how much sin? Any amount, right? You are now in opposition. Nothing unholy is of God. So, how does one get reconciled? This is the whole question they have with the incarnation. God becoming flesh to take on. He who knew no sin became sin for us. This is scriptural. This isn't something you guys just wanted to take over from... What do they blame it on? Egypt. You're copying Egypt and Horus. No, that's not true. Or you're copying these Babylonians. No, it's not true. Look at scripture and it has always been very clear on that. I'll give an example of... Sacrifice needed. You know that the shedding of blood. So there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood. Again, scriptural. So looking at that in its entirety, the necessity of a sacrifice. Alright, in the Old Testament, did they make one sacrifice and it was done? You're familiar with the sacrificial system in the Old Testament. What was it? Perpetual. And was it just once a year? There's one big one a year. And then it was, well, here's the sacrifice for the sins you've confessed, and here's one for the sins you don't know that you made. All right? That's a terrible way to live. That is a works-based, all right? But, and then we read in Hebrews, and I got Hebrews open here, but I wanted to end up reading a whole chapter, so I'm not gonna do that. But in chapter 10, so when he came into the world, he said, sacrifice an offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me. Whole burnt offerings and sin offerings you took no delight in. Then I said, here I am. I have come. It is written of me in the scroll of the book to do your will, oh God. And I love going back to Abraham taking his son up for the sacrifice. Okay, one, it's a great example, a foreshadow of the substance we're gonna see in Christ. But when God told him, nevermind, don't sacrifice your son, that was it, right? Nothing else happened? So there was still a sacrifice. All right, we get that idea of this substitution for the sacrifice, substitutionary atonement. So there was a substitute for that sacrifice, but the sacrifice was still made. All right, it needs to be made to reconcile To fall in humanity with the divine, holy, eternal God, there has to be of the like. So one, to make that recompense we have to have divinity. But in order to pay for our sins, it has to be like us. to redeem us, to reclaim us in our humanity. And that was a problem that they had against Apollinarius who said that he had the divine mind and will but not human. Well then how can our human mind and will be reclaimed if Christ did not have that nature like we have? So the divine taking on our nature, a human nature, to reconcile. That's why I love that word reconcile. How do we reconcile humanity with God? Deincarnation. Is that crazy? Does that make you think a lot more than you really want to? I see some smoke back there. I think it was R.C. that referred to sin as cosmic treason. And if you think of it as being even the smallest sin being eternal against God, and then you have to have something that appeases that eternally. And so, I mean, what was the word? Propitiation. Yeah. I mean, it just... To appease God. Yeah, it makes sense that you would... That's the only way that it could be covered, that our sins would be imputed and we're covered by His righteousness. Because He's God, but He's also man. And not just the fact that He's man, but He's man perfected. He's a perfection of man. There was no sin in Him. That's the only sacrifice that could appease for that eternal rebellion, treason against God. But people, again, since we're talking about this next week, we're not going to be talking about the Christological, so hopefully we'll get into some of this though. But His humanity and His divinity, trying to reconcile some things. The temptation in the wilderness. Was Christ tempted? We know that because Scripture says so, right? Could He have succumbed to those temptations? Could he have given in? Could he have said, yes, I'll eat this bread? So he could? Because he's God, he can't. So he can't? No, I don't think he would be able to. It would go against his nature. It would go against what nature? His divine nature. He's like us in all ways, right? Does your human nature prevent you from giving in to temptation? But it goes back to being holy humanity. And this comes up to it he lived a perfect life All right, and I love the way the confession doesn't know but there were the two the active and passive Sacrifices of Christ or his obedience there the the sacrifice atoning for the original sin and Adam, but then also the sacrifice paying for Our sins, so his sacrifice cleanses of our sins, but him living that perfect righteous life appeased what was needed that Adam failed. The second Adam lived the perfect life to gain that reward that the first Adam couldn't. Alright, so where the first Adam imputed his failure of living that perfect life to us, the second Adam is imputing his righteousness of living that perfect life. So the question comes in, if he could not fail in his humanity, was it really a sacrifice? I hate these conversations, because it makes you start thinking, I don't like thinking of God in these terms. And I know we're joking and laughing, but this is the reverence that these men had. I don't want to speak ill of God, you know, like when they say, watch out, lightning's gonna strike you kind of a thing. They wanted to be faithful to God. Well, could he have been tempted and given into that temptation? If not, was he not like us in every way? Because it says he was like us in every way, tempted in every way. Is it temptation if you can't give in to the temptation? That's a problem I have struggled with. I say yes, Christ could not have sinned. However... I have to remember because now I'm saying that it's the divinity is running all of his humanity. So what I'm doing when I say that is now I'm stepping into the air of the divinity is overshadowing the humanity. And that's why I like that though, that each nature, each form does what is proper to it with the cooperation of the other. Each nature acts according to that nature. The divine nature cannot sin. The human nature did not sin. If that makes sense. And it still doesn't make sense. It's like, I don't want to say yes or no here now. Yes and no. All right. The prayer in the garden. All right. Father, take this cup from me. Did he not know what was coming? Does he sound afraid? That's not the divinity, that's the humanity. All right, each acting according to its nature. And again, it's not saying that they're too distinct because it's one person. It's two natures in one person. The man-god, the god-man, Christ Jesus. It's very difficult to talk about these things. Luckily, we have lots and lots of books and great, smarter men than anybody in this room all collectively put together and some that are dumber than all of us put together. But they write books that we have access to that we can study and pray on and go to the scriptures and look for because this is really good stuff there. Or, no man knows the hour, not even I. I thought you were omniscient. Right, oh, he set aside his divinity. Oh, so. Right? That Philippians, he, yes, he set aside his glory. So how do you reconcile that when somebody says, well, if Jesus knew everything, how come he didn't know these things? And then other times, he knew. I knew what they were thinking. I knew what you guys were thinking before you came here. Get away from me, you sons of serpents and you den of vipers and stuff. So what we do have is recorded for our benefit, for our encouragement, for edification, and for us to know that, yes, he was Completely human. Yes, he was completely God. How does that work? I'll answer it according to each example. Was he tempted? Yes. We start off in John, created everything, and then put on flesh. Is this, you think, beneficial to us? And again, I love the history anyway, so I got sidetracked on all that history going down the Byzantine Empire and going back. Like, wait a minute, that's Macedonia. Let me go look up Philip of Macedonia. So I went back, you know, B.C. because I'm dumb sometimes and get sidetracked so far. But this is important stuff. to have a understanding of so you know what's not true. Nobody in here is going to be able to answer all these questions. I'm probably going to mess up and forget which one said what because was it Antioch that was unity or were they the ones that were distinct? Which school of thought was it? Don't expect this to be 100%. But the stress on either of these is taking away from the work that was done in Christ, in the Incarnation. Who's got some questions or some input? I hate that, I'm gonna quit using input. I'm reading a stupid book for my writing class, and like, input is what you put into a computer. You want opinions, you want people's views, not input. Like what? I just wanted to say something that I guess is like a really big bite. That's a big bite. And I know that I addressed two of them today instead of one, but it's impossible to talk about the one without the other because that was at the same time, that was the infighting between the church there. All right. And then what we're gonna get into, and so next week is our last week on an actual formal class, and a week after we'll get together and have a fellowship meal, and you're gonna be gone though, huh? Sorry, bro. You can still bring cookies, all right? Go in your box, man. But next week, we're going to fast forward to the 16th century. And what I like about it is it's going to show All these men that we've been reading about, so close to the apostles. So here are those who walked with Christ. So close to them, and how they tried to look at the tradition before them, and find the errors, and correct those errors as they went on. And then we're going to fast forward a thousand years, and these men don't want to look at any of the early church history. Here's all I need. Are there any, like, really big historical heresies coming from, like, the creation of evil, where evil comes from as far as like, well, I mean, you know what I'm saying, like, yeah, are there any big time heresies that came out of that in history? Marcion would probably be the biggest one. The God who created the world was the creator of evil. The Old Testament God Yahweh, the Jews, all that. So that part of sin and where evil came from is probably the biggest one. As I was saying, I didn't realize that I was basically a Marcionite until... Wow, that's a thing. I didn't mean that, but that's what I was stepping into. That's probably the biggest one I would say that was Marcion. And so even the Old Testament, everything about that, that's the evil God, the counterpart to the good father who didn't reveal himself until he let Jesus be born. So there's that one. And even on some of these here, to a lesser extent to original sin. So there is no original sin. Evil comes into us as we're born. Still, that way it's not credit to God. So again, they don't want to, you know, say God's the author of evil. So, you know, thank you for that. But now you did it somehow, some way. And you start out with a clean slate. So it is possible for you to live a perfect life, which is what we looked at last week. Who's the author of evil? There are secondary causes, so rebelling against God, that's where you're now authoring evil. Disobedience, that's authoring evil. It's a very difficult topic, especially in the light of a completely sovereign God. Don't get me wrong, it's one of those things I sat there and thought about for a long time, and I finally just got to the point where I'm just like, you know what, I'm just gonna believe straight up that, I mean, scripture says he's not the author of evil, so, but there's just, you know, there's parts of it that are just hard to grasp, like, if God is all-knowing and all-powerful and sovereign, and then it's just like, okay, well, he obviously knew all this was gonna happen. Like, if you're gonna put it into, like, an analogy of, like, you know, if I had a grenade, and I made this grenade, and I knew all the parts of the grenade, and I knew what this grenade does, and then I pull the pin and throw it, and it blows up five minutes and seconds later, well, that was a grenade's fault. I just wanna know where you got a grenade, bro. Yeah. But, like, You know what I'm saying. But I'm not arguing that. Yeah, nope. I understand. It does get difficult, but then we have to look at, and I like looking at Jacob. He and his mom deceived the father to get the inheritance, to get the blessing. Are you telling me that God was like, no, it was supposed to be Esau. What did you guys do? Murder. No, this was decree. This was divine providence. They're authoring that evil because deception was evil. That's against God. That's evil. All right. But that's where the nation came from, right? Jacob was given another name. What was his other name? Israel. All right. What about his son? What happened to him? Why are you focusing on the evil part, man? No, no. This was God's plan. This was God's plan. He does not author evil. That's us. Secondary causes and wicked men and fallen angels because we do see that in the rebellion. God cannot sin, so. And people say, well, God murdered people. No, murder is what we do. OK, well, he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, we should all be destroyed, so that's his justice. That's not murder, right? We get into that whole concept, and people don't want to hear about that anymore. I want this loving God who loves everybody, and nobody's going to die. That's fantasy. That's fairytale. That's not giving God all the credit that he deserves, because he is also a just God. Right? But yes, it is a difficult category with evil. I love going to the Jacob and the Joseph because, you know, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. And part of what made it difficult for me when I used to dwell on that more was like, okay, well, you can say the secondary cause and all that, but at the same time, outside of being regenerated by the Holy Spirit, you can't do anything to please God in the first place. And it's just like, so I'm limited to only doing simple things because that time hasn't come yet. You know what I'm saying? It's just like, I just gotta stop. I was like going down a rabbit trail. We're trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Our finite minds, well no, this is good, this is bad. Well, when I do it, it's bad, so when God does it, it's bad. Okay, one, stop. Are you God? Secondly, Do you know the mind of God to know what the result is? And still, the sons were blessed. It wasn't Joseph that got the blessing of the promised Messiah to come through. Alright? Was it the firstborn though? Wasn't the last. Which of the tribe of Jacob did the promised Messiah come through, Tyson? There's another expression for Christ, the Lion of... It's not the brother that they want to murder, but they're originally planning to murder. All right, brother. Take care, man. Take care. Yep. So they're still honoring in that thought, yes. And there's a terrible movie, I know, not accurate at all, but it's got Ben Kingsley in it, and he plays Potiphar, and I love it. And they go into the whole, it's a two-part movie, but they go into Jacob and everything. I'm like, this is fantastic. You took the story and expanded it into a three-hour movie for me, and I loved it. Yeah, so they throw him in the pit and they're gonna kill him. No, let's sell him. And then they show, yeah, Judah coming to rescue him. It's too late, we sold him. And it's not what scripture says, but I get you're trying to show that he's not that bad of a guy. All right, but the brothers were, even before this, you know, when Jacob... I forget the name of the city now, but the prince mistreated a daughter of Jacob. And like, nope, what we're going to do then is they're going to be married. OK, so all of your men have to be circumcised, become like us, and we'll be friends now. And the son's like, OK, wait, wait, wait, go, kill them all. Evil. So they were routinely evil. So they authored that own evil. But again, it led up to the salvation of Israel. And then you look at that, well, that only worked for a little bit because in Egypt, you know, put them into slavery, again, for God's glory to show and even the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. Well, Pharaoh had no choice. His heart was hardened by God. That's how we read it. He was already hardened. Look at him. What's that? When you hear that, well, he had no choice. God hardened his heart. Ultimately, all is decreed by God. I get that. But the means, the secondary causes are completely, they're not of God authoring evil. So that's just an easy way for me to look at it and not to throw a heresy or blasphemy to our God. Anyway, there's good stuff to talk about there. And I love the Christological conversations because people do the, yeah, you worship a dead God. Or people say, if Jesus were alive today. You don't understand Christianity at all. And some Christians look at it that way, though. Even that, though, there's a divine nature, right? But we know Christ is sitting at the right hand of God the Father, but we know that he sent the Comforter, and we know that the Trinity is in unity, and unity in Trinity, so yes, where can you go that God is not? I have a people, I hear that, you know, if Jesus were alive today, bro, I thought you called yourself a Christian. Our God is not dead. So, well, I appreciate you all bearing with my political historical mess over there.