The Council of Chalcedon

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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May 7, 2014

00:00: Tonight, we are continuing in our study, examining church history, looking at the creeds and the confessions of the church through the ages and why they matter.
00:17: Tonight is lesson five, the Council of Chalcedon.
00:23: So far in our study, we have looked first at the 2000 years of church history in an overview, and then we went back to the scripture and we saw how the idea of creeds and confessions are found throughout the Bible.
00:39: There are certain texts within the Bible that lend themselves to memorization and to being called doctrinal or didactic teaching passages.
00:50: We also looked at the early church documents.
00:53: Just a couple.
00:54: There are too many for us to examine them all.
00:56: But we looked at what was called the didache, the teaching of the apostles, and we looked at the Apostles Creed.
01:04: Last week, we looked at the Council of Nicaea and we looked at the Nicene Creed.
01:11: Tonight, we're going to examine what would become recognized by many Anglicans and Protestants as the last ecumenical council, ecumenical meaning worldwide.
01:24: This would be the last worldwide council of the church, which is called the Council of Chalcedon.
01:32: In your notes, I've outlined tonight's lesson for you.
01:36: We're going to begin by looking at the history of the council.
01:44: In 8325, which was last week's lesson, we learned that the first ecumenical council was held in Nicaea.
01:53: So in 8325, we have the Council of Nicaea.
02:05: It affirmed, the Council of Nicaea affirmed the full deity of Jesus Christ, that he was homoousia, the same substance of the father.
02:17: He was begotten, but not made.
02:19: He is not a creature.
02:20: He is the creator.
02:22: It was rejected, however, by Arius and his followers who became known as the Arians.
02:30: And the Arian heresy believed that Jesus was not the creator, but was himself merely a creature.
02:38: He was not everlasting, but was himself created by God at some point in time.
02:44: That was the Arian false teaching, the Arian heresy.
02:52: Nicaea was an attempt to stop the Arian heresy, and the Nicene Creed absolutely rejected Arianism.
03:01: However, it did not stop the Arians.
03:07: In fact, Nicaea, after Nicaea, there was the resurgence of the Arian heresy.
03:14: And I think that that's your first blank, that after Nicaea, there was a resurgence of the Arian heresy.
03:20: And that is A-R-I-A-N, the Arian heresy.
03:29: It was made all the more worse when Constantine, the emperor of Rome, after Nicaea, even though he had affirmed Nicaea and affirmed the Nicene Creed, after Nicaea, because of political interest, he became lenient in regard to the Arians.
03:48: And his son, Constantinus II, or Constantius II, rather, actually sided with the Arians in opposition to those who held to the Nicene Creed.
04:00: So Constantine's son sided with the Arians.
04:07: After Constantine's...
04:09: Constantine actually also, in this big debate, exiled Athanasius.
04:16: I don't know if you remember from last week's lesson, but Athanasius was one of the bishops who fought at Nicaea.
04:23: He fought for the truth and he stood for the truth.
04:26: And after Nicaea was over, the Arians brought false charges against Athanasius.
04:33: In fact, next week's lesson, I'm going to talk about some of the false charges.
04:37: They accused him of prostitution.
04:40: They accused him of stealing money.
04:44: They accused him of murder, even, to try to silence him.
04:49: It's so interesting.
04:50: Next week's going to be fun because we're going to see how he actually took them to task in his own trial, demonstrating how false their accusations were.
04:58: But Athanasius was exiled by Constantine.
05:02: It was a political move to move him out of the way.
05:05: And Athanasius was exiled by him.
05:08: After Constantine died, he came back.
05:10: Constantius II, Constantine's son, exiled him again.
05:14: Athanasius was exiled five times, at least.
05:18: History records five different exiles for Athanasius.
05:21: In fact, the term came from that point in history, Athanasius contra mundum, which is Latin for Athanasius against the world.
05:32: And that was the term.
05:33: It would seem like there was a time in which Athanasius was told, Athanasius, the whole world is against you.
05:41: And he said, then I am against the world because I stand for the truth.
05:46: And a powerful man and powerful.
05:49: So, like I said, we're going to study more about his life next week.
05:52: But it was because of men like Athanasius that the Arians were unsuccessful in their attempts to try to squelch the truth of the deity of Christ.
06:02: So this led to another council.
06:04: After the Council of Nicaea in AD 381, there came the Council of Constantinople, which occurred in AD 381, still within the same century, but over 50 years later.
06:29: The Council of Constantinople upheld the teachings of Nicaea against the Arians and rejected the teachings of a heretic whose name was Apollinarius.
06:42: Apollinarius, rather, taught that Jesus was not fully human, but rather that his divine nature had displaced his human mind and his human will.
06:53: Essentially, Apollinarius said that Jesus had a human body, but he had God's brain.
07:01: Now I'm simplifying this very, very much, as much as I can.
07:05: He's saying that Jesus had a human body, but a divine mind.
07:11: And that he didn't have a human mind, that he didn't have a human nature, that his nature was divine and not human.
07:20: After this, there arose out of that teaching another heresy called Nestorianism.
07:26: And that was from the teaching of a man named Nestorius.
07:29: I think this is a blank on your sheet.
07:34: Nestorius arose after Apollinarius.
07:39: And Nestorianism taught that Jesus had two separate natures and two separate wills, effectively making him two separate persons.
07:51: Jesus had the divine nature and he had the human nature, and that these two natures were separate, and ultimately Jesus was two people in essence.
08:02: That was condemned at the Council of Ephesus in A.D.
08:07: 431.
08:08: That's the next council.
08:10: You have the Council of Ephesus in A.D.
08:16: 431.
08:22: Ten years after this, a man by the name of Eutychus denied that Jesus had a truly human nature and said that his human nature had been absorbed by his divine nature and that the unity of Christ's nature was to such an extent that Christ's divinity consumes his humanity as the ocean consumes a drop of vinegar.
08:53: So it was that heresy, and we're going to explain more about why it's heretical in a little while, but it was that heresy that brought about the Council of Chalcedon in A.D.
09:04: 451.
09:04: So it was Eutychianism, and I will write that one down because I'm sure some of you may want to write that down.
09:13: Eutychianism, E-U-T-Y-C-H-I-A-N-I-S-M.
09:21: Eutychianism was what brought about the Council of Chalcedon in A.D.
09:27: 451.
09:30: What's interesting about the Council of Chalcedon, yes, no, 10 years later, Eutychius brought his error, not the council.
09:46: The council was 20 years later.
09:49: I'm sorry, I'm sure the note would seem kind of confusing.
09:52: What I was saying is it was 10 years later that we have Eutychius bringing the error and then the council convenes in 51, which would have been 20 years after that council.
10:01: I'm sorry for the confusion.
10:02: I understand why that would be confusing.
10:04: I'm sorry about that.
10:08: The problem that one of the problems in my notes is my notes don't look like your notes.
10:12: My notes have all the other information that I need.
10:16: So sometimes it's hard for me to remember what's in what you have versus what I have.
10:23: But the teaching, one of the things that I put in your notes was I wanted to show you the dates.
10:29: The dates for Chalcedon are really interesting.
10:32: It began October the 8th in 451.
10:37: It ended November the 1st, 451.
10:43: That is not long for a council.
10:48: When you consider other councils and the length of time that was spent, sometimes years, dealing with certain theological subjects, this particular council lasted less than one month.
11:04: It was an October retreat for the some 500 bishops who were there to go together and to come to a conclusion regarding the teachings of Eutychius.
11:20: So this is the history.
11:22: We have the Council of Nicaea.
11:24: We have the Council at Constantinople.
11:25: We have the Council at Ephesus.
11:26: And now we have the Council of Chalcedon at 451.
11:33: All of these things are concerned primarily with the nature and person of Jesus Christ.
11:40: Who was he? Was he God? Was he man? Was he some kind of a mixture? Or was he both God and man? And that was the question.
11:51: And that was the debate that raged within the first few centuries after Christ came.
12:03: So let's look now at the decision of the council.
12:08: The Council of Chalcedon anathematized both those who taught that Jesus only had one divine nature and those who taught that he had a mixture of two natures.
12:20: The word anathematized, I will write for you.
12:23: A-N-A-T-H-E-M-I-Z-E-R-A-M.
12:30: Let me try that again.
12:31: A-N-A-T-H-E-M-A-T-I-Z-E-D.
12:39: Anathematized.
12:39: Sometimes it's hard to look at it like this.
12:44: What does the word anathematized mean? Somebody tell me.
12:50: Second blank on the last one.
12:59: Oh, November 1st.
13:03: What does anathema mean? Anyone know? Yes.
13:09: Richard answered.
13:10: I think he already did.
13:11: What was the answer, Richard? Bad.
13:18: But it doesn't mean bad.
13:21: Yes.
13:26: Anathematized means to curse or to call something bad or to say that it is wrong.
13:33: When a person is excommunicated, they are often called anathema.
13:38: Their teachings or whatever they've said, it's called anathema.
13:40: It's bad.
13:41: It's cursed.
13:43: Okay.
13:43: So basically to curse the one who taught that Jesus only had one divine nature and those who taught that he had a mixture of two natures.
13:58: It was essential to the council that the two natures of Christ, and this is on your notes.
14:05: I see this.
14:05: I had this marked.
14:07: It was essential to the council that the two natures of Christ be defined as being distinct and unmixed, yet remaining fully unified.
14:18: Two natures must be defined as distinct and unmixed, but yet fully unified.
14:32: By defining Christ as both fully human and fully divine, the council had made it easier to define and identify error because now it was a little easier to define error.
14:52: Groups that could not affirm both the full divinity and full humanity of Christ were considered unorthodox and heretical.
14:59: If you could not confirm that Jesus was fully God and fully man, you're a heretic.
15:03: That was the reason for the council to affirm this simple thing.
15:06: If you cannot affirm that Christ is both fully God and fully man at the same time.
15:19: Certainly, certainly.
15:20: But there are things that we understand are not right.
15:23: When someone says that Christ did not have a human nature, we say that is not true.
15:28: And that's part of what this council is focusing on.
15:31: Those who would say he was only divine mentally or that he was only divine spiritually, that he didn't have a human nature like we do.
15:37: He had a fully human nature.
15:39: He was fully man and fully God.
15:41: And that's why we use the word fully and not 100%.
15:44: I've heard people who say he's 100% God and 100% man.
15:47: Get that language out of your mind because there's no percentages with God.
15:52: You're either fully God or fully not.
15:55: And that's the point.
15:56: Those who use the term of percentages tend to bring in a mathematical equation that is not part of what we're trying to get across.
16:04: We are saying in every way God is God, Christ was God.
16:07: And in every way man is man, Christ is man.
16:13: OK, that's the point.
16:15: Fully God, fully man.
16:18: All right.
16:19: The council also ratified the creeds of Nicaea and of Constantinople, and they condemned the heresies of Eutychus and Nestorius.
16:29: So the council came together for that purpose, affirm that Christ is fully God and fully man, and to anathematize Eutychus, Nestorius, and by extension Apollinaris, because he would have been longer back, but he would have fallen under their condemnation as well.
16:48: In addition to the theological focus of Christ, there were also 30 disciplinary canons which the council established.
17:00: Remember what a canon is.
17:02: A canon is a rule of law for the church.
17:04: Remember some of the canons at Nicaea we talked about last week.
17:07: Some of you weren't here.
17:08: One of the interesting canons from the council of Nicaea was that it was made against the rules of the church that you kneel in prayer on Sundays and during the days following Resurrection Sunday through Pentecost, the Pentecost time, because those were considered celebratory times.
17:26: And you don't kneel in prayer because kneeling in prayer is a penitentiary prayer.
17:31: You're praying in penitence.
17:32: You don't kneel in prayer when you celebrate, so you had to stand for your prayers.
17:37: And that was made a rule for the church, interestingly enough, at Nicaea.
17:41: If you ever want to look at some interesting reading, pull out the councils and pull out the rules, because that's what the canons were.
17:48: They were canon law.
17:49: They were rules for the church.
17:51: And some of them are quite interesting.
17:53: We think we debate today on small subjects like the color of the carpet and things like that.
17:58: Well, they've been having these rules and things set up from the beginning.
18:02: Yes, sir? Error.
18:11: I just said error.
18:12: Oh, error.
18:13: Okay.
18:14: Yeah.
18:15: Thank you.
18:16: Absolutely.
18:17: Absolutely.
18:18: We're actually moving through this a little faster than I thought we would, which is good.
18:23: I hope I'm not leaving folks behind.
18:25: But now we're going to actually get to the confession of the council.
18:29: This is where we're going to start slowing down, because we're actually going to read the confession of the council.
18:34: It'll be up here on the screen for us.
18:35: We're going to look at the confession of the council and see what it was that the bishops who came together affirmed in regard to the person of Jesus Christ.
18:50: I've got it here for us.
18:52: We're going to stop at certain points and look deeper, but I want us to just read through it and see it.
19:00: So the first thing.
19:03: The creed goes as follows.
19:08: 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 regards his Godhead.
19:38: 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.
19:53: 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.
20:14: The distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and one 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 of the fathers has handed down to us.
21:00: We have here the Chalcedonian Confession, and it tells us many things about Jesus Christ, but most particularly, it tells us that we should see Christ as having two natures, fully God and fully man, a fully divine nature and a fully human nature.
21:23: It says that we should recognize him as being truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body.
21:30: The term reasonable soul and body references the fact that he is, in fact, a human being, that he has a human soul and body, but yet at the same time, he is of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead in divinity.
21:45: He is, as the Nicene Creed says, homoousia.
21:49: He is of one substance.
21:51: The same substance as the Father.
21:56: But yet, in regard to his manhood, he is begotten by the Virgin Mary.
22:01: There's an important word here.
22:02: The term God-bearer comes from the Greek word theotokos.
22:07: Theotokos is sometimes translated Mother of God.
22:12: That term is really an unfortunate use of language because we should not consider Christ and Mary's relationship in the sense of her being the Mother of God in the way that the Roman Catholics do.
22:24: The Roman Catholics expressed her motherhood in such a way that it, in some ways, makes Christ subordinate to her.
22:32: At least, it makes her a mediator between the Church and Christ.
22:37: And she is sometimes even referred to as co-mediatrix with Christ.
22:42: They pray through Mary to Christ.
22:46: And that itself is wrong.
22:48: So, rather than saying Mother of God, we choose the term God-bearer because Mother of God puts the emphasis on the Mother wherein we put the emphasis on the word God.
23:00: Yes, Mary bore God the Son.
23:04: In his humanity and his divinity, his fullness was borne in her womb.
23:12: But yet, at the same time, we understand that Jesus Christ, her being his mother, does not indicate that she is in any way a mediator between he and the Church.
23:27: This statement affirms the doctrine, this Chalcedonian Creed affirms the doctrine known as the hypostatic union.
23:39: Hypostasis means the underpinning or the existence of something.
23:43: It is the substance, or more specifically, the subsistence of a thing.
23:49: It is its being, its nature, its substantive reality.
23:54: The hypostatic union is the union of the divine nature and the human nature in the one person of Jesus Christ.
24:04: It is a personal union in Christ of the human and the divine.
24:13: It is also a direct rejection of monophysitism.
24:18: Mono, meaning one, and physis, meaning nature, was the failure of Eutychianism and Apollinarianism.
24:26: They were both examples of the monophysite heresy because they both said that Jesus had but one divine nature.
24:35: And the council at Chalcedon rejected that and said, no, he does not have one nature, he has two natures.
24:43: Those natures are distinct.
24:46: They are inseparable, but at the same time, they are not to be mixed.
24:52: They are united in the one person of Christ.
24:56: Now let's move on to the controversies of the council.
25:00: Along with the issues relating to the nature of Christ, there was a major ecclesiastical issue which came as a result of the council.
25:07: The council assigned equal honor to the church of Constantinople as it did the church at Rome.
25:15: Constantinople was called, in fact, the new Rome and was given the same authority as the old Rome.
25:23: In Canon 28 of the Chalcedonian Canons, remember there were 30 of them, in Canon 28 it reads as follows, the bishop of new Rome shall enjoy the same honor as the bishop of old Rome on account of the removal of the empire.
25:39: For this reason, the metropolitans of Pontus, of Asia, and of Thrace, as well as the barbarian bishops, shall be ordained by the bishops of Constantinople.
25:51: This was a major move by the council to try to equalize some of the authority which had been centralized in Rome.
26:02: And Pope Leo in Rome refused to ratify this position though he accepted the rest of the Chalcedonian Canons.
26:11: And this would actually plant the seeds which would grow and become the great schism which would occur between the Eastern Church and the Western Church in A.D.
26:23: 1054.
26:25: This is where the rift began to be evident.
26:30: The council also resulted in an immediate schism with those who refused to accept the teachings of Chalcedon.
26:39: The Oriental Orthodox Church stood opposed to Chalcedon, yet they denied supporting monophysitism.
26:48: They said they were not monophysites.
26:50: They did not believe that Christ only had one divine nature, but yet they said they denied that he had two natures.
27:00: They argued for what they would label meaphysitism.
27:05: And meaphysitism was the argument that the two natures had mixed together and created a new nature for Christ.
27:19: The Chalcedonian Council had essentially solidified something called deophysitism which defined Christ as having two natures united in one person.
27:29: But the Oriental Orthodox felt that this was too close to the teachings of Nestorius.
27:34: Remember, Nestorius actually taught that there were two persons living in one body.
27:39: Meaphysitism is the belief that in Christ there is a union of the divine and human in one single nature without separation or confusion.
27:48: It's very, very similar, but there is a difference.
27:52: Deophysitism, what the Chalcedonian Creed teaches, says that Christ has two natures, one divine and one human, which are united in one person.
28:01: Meaphysitism, taught by the Oriental Orthodox Church, says that Christ has one nature, which is the union of the divine and the human.
28:14: As you can see, these are very similar, but yet different interpretations and understandings of the person of Jesus Christ.
28:26: The vast majority of the Church has followed the Chalcedonian definition and it has remained the standard of orthodoxy down through the ages.
28:35: The meaphysite position is still considered to be very close and too close to monophysitism, that they argue that Christ has but one nature, and yet we argue, the Chalcedonian Church, the churches that hold to the Council of Chalcedon's decision, believe that Christ had two natures, a fully human nature and a fully divine nature, which were united in the one person of Jesus Christ.
29:07: This is how we can understand Christ as referencing His own limitations when He was on this earth, talking about the fact that He did not even know the time of His coming, His second coming, but yet at the same time He could make expressions of full knowledge of all things when He spoke of knowing His disciples before He had even met them.
29:31: So we see here the dual nature of Christ exemplified in the Scriptures.
29:41: This debate may seem like a bunch of theological hair-splitting, but these are serious issues.
29:47: They are worthy of serious debate.
29:51: We are blessed that the early Church considered these issues so important that the men of that day were willing to battle over sound doctrine and seek to be so precise in their language.
30:05: We stand on the shoulders of giants.
30:09: When we claim Jesus is fully God and fully man, we know that this is not some flippant idea.
30:15: It is a doctrine based thoroughly on Scripture and thought through by some of the greatest minds in Christian history.
30:25: I want to end with a final thought.
30:30: Tonight, at the end of the lesson, many of you will get into your cars and you will drive home, but yet many of you do not understand totally how your vehicle works.
30:43: You understand how wheels work and probably have some idea of how the engine works, but you don't know everything about that vehicle.
30:51: You only know that when you get in and you drive it, that it works.
30:55: And the reason why it works is because there were geniuses, there were men and women who took the time to study and to put together that automobile so that you would understand it and that you would be able to drive it.
31:10: And beloved, that is the way I look at some of these creeds.
31:15: There are some things that it would take a lifetime to study and ponder and some of these men used their lifetimes to study and ponder them.
31:24: And beloved, when I sit down and look at these creeds, I look at them as masterful works of theological investment, where these men took the time within their lives to study these subjects at length and they sought to understand them so that they could pass on to the generations which would come after them an understanding which could be trusted and could be encouraging to them.
31:55: Beloved, we don't have to understand, as some of you have noted tonight, there are some of this that's difficult to understand, but we don't have to understand everything about the nature of Jesus Christ as divine and the human nature to understand that the Bible does teach that this is true, that Jesus is fully human and fully divine.
32:19: And to understand what the Chalcedonian Council was attempting to rebuff, and that was that those who would say that Christ only has one nature or that those who would say that Christ has two persons in him, the two natures, but that these two natures are not united, that these are wrong, that we must understand that Christ is fully manned and fully God, and united in the one person.
32:51: That is orthodox biblical Christianity.
32:56: And though it may be hard for us to wrap our minds around, we need not be lacking confidence to state the truth that Jesus is fully God and fully man.