Cancel Culture at Chalcedon

Well, welcome to the driving line. I've got about 370 miles to go today until I get home.

I'm looking forward to that. But I wanted to touch on some more issues that are being discussed online.

I wanted to start with a verse that I have recommended to people for many decades that they add to their memorization list for many reasons, but especially if you're dealing with subordinationists,

Jehovah's Witnesses, people like that. And that is Colossians 2 .9.

And now, of course, it comes after 2 .8, which is a warning against being taken captive by philosophy and men's traditions.

And it gives the reason for that. Hati enauto katoikai ponta pleroma tes theatitas somaticos, for in him is dwelling all the fullness of deity in bodily form.

And it is hard to escape the reality that Paul is either directly at that time, because there was already this teaching coming from the

East, which would be very early, or even prophetically, warning of what would come, dealing with sort of a preemptive strike against what is going to be the greatest enemy and challenge to the church in the early centuries, that of course is the heresy of Gnosticism, the religion of Gnosticism.

And there, in one sentence, you have the assertion that the reason that all of man's knowledge, philosophy, traditions, beliefs, are to be subject to Christ, which sometimes embarrasses

Christians to say, really does. Let's just be honest. There are Christians who are embarrassed when we say

Jesus Christ is Lord, all of human knowledge is to be under his lordship.

It will only result in human flourishing when that knowledge is ordered in light of Christ and in light of his lordship and his person.

That embarrasses people. But the reason is given right here, for in him is dwelling all the fullness of deity in bodily form, that which makes

God, God. It's not Godhead, it's deity, that which makes

God, God. Theatetos is not the same as theiot, which is used over in Romans 120. They're different words.

And Theatetos is much more specific. And it is said that all the fullness of deity is dwelling in him in bodily form.

Now, I've read lots of commentaries on this text, and I know that there are some other takes, but in light of where Colossians 2 .9

fits in the whole polemic of Colossians, I think the only way really to consistently interpret it is to go ahead and put emphasis upon the fact that he says katoikai, he says, is dwelling.

Not just in some gnomic sense, but post -resurrection, all the fullness of that which makes

God, God, is dwelling in Christ, somatikos. Now, again, some people understand somatikos as really, or something like that, but I think the emphasis has to be seen in the polemic as being the physicality of the resurrection.

Christ is still the God -man. He has not laid aside that perfect human nature that he took on freely in the incarnation.

And he continues dwelling in that God -man state, even in that day, and therefore is the standard of all things.

I mean, if he is the fullness of deity dwelling in bodily form, now, you need to understand, that is about as blatant, blunt, as blunt -force trauma to the head of Gnosticism, I guess would be the way to put it.

It is a, the whole concept of Yaldabaoth and Sophia and the

Aeons and the Pleroma, and all of that is obliterated, just nuked,

I'm not sure we can use that term right now, but done away with by the assertion that everything that makes

God, God, the highest level of the, of the

Pleroma, is dwelling bodily in Christ.

I mean, that is totally and completely outside the realm of possibility for the

Gnostics. And so that is a, you cannot affirm what the Apostle says and continue to hold on to any type of Gnostic concept at all.

So, here you have, in this epistle to the

Church at Colossae, a description of Christ post -Resurrection, that is so central to why we say that Christ has to be

Lord of human knowledge, and why we subject all forms of human philosophy, which would include all forms of human philosophy that existed prior to Christ, to Christ, and to His Lordship, and to His Sovereignty.

Absolutely necessary because He is not merely some secondary created creature, no matter how exalted.

All the Pleroma, the fullness of that which makes

God, God, is dwelling in Him in bodily form. He is the Creator. He took on human flesh.

He has not abandoned that flesh. He has not ceased being the

God -man. Now, I wasn't going to mention this, but I would just, I would just point out that that seems really honestly to cause some serious problems for people who try to force

Aristotle's categories on the

Christian God. And it would seem to cause problems for people who are today just obliterating the clear distinctions between Father, Son, and Spirit, not as to their deity, not as to the fact that each is described as Yahweh, their full participation in the

Divine Being. But the fact that the Bible differentiates between them. And simply to say that, well, the

Son is incarnate and appropriations and... No. The Son not only became incarnate and took on a perfect human nature, but it is through Him.

It is in Him. Ephesians 1, in Him, in Him, in the Beloved, in Him, over and over and over again, in Christ.

Our union with God is through the God -man, through the

Incarnation, through the Son, in a way that is not the same as with the

Father or the Spirit. The Spirit may entwell us, and that's unique to the

Spirit in that sense, but the union is with Christ, the

God -man. That's why He has to remain the God -man, because the people of God are united to God in this astonishing fulfillment of Emmanuel, in the

Old Testament, God with us. And so, here you have it laid out in this tremendous verse that teaches the

Deity of Christ, teaches the Humanity of Christ, the continuing reality of Incarnation, even in the exalted state where He rules and reigns, and is the standard of all human knowledge and predication and everything else.

It's an incredible passage. It's nice and short to memorize, but there's obviously a whole lot behind it, especially when you study

Gnosticism, you see the terms that play Roma, you see Eon all through Colossians, and the specific utilization, that same terminology by the

Gnostics, in the first number of centuries of the history of the Christian Church. So, with that, we have a biblical text, we have something that is

Theanustos. It is God -breathed. What is God -breathed? That is

God -breathed. That exists on a level of authority that no human philosopher, system of philosophy, system of theology, can ever approach.

If we believe in inspiration, if we believe what Jesus Himself taught on that particular subject, if we believe as He did, that this is

God speaking, then we have to confess the unique nature of the authority of those words in that original language.

And that has to be the bulwark, the foundation, the ground for all the affirmations that we make.

Now, if we say that we must interpret those

Greek words in the light of any kind of external system, then the question becomes, well, then that which is

Theanustos is dependent upon this system that you are promoting.

And the system therefore must have the same or higher, if possible, level of authority.

This is where the issue of sola scriptura, tota scriptura, scriptural sufficiency all comes together.

Now, that is just one of many texts, not only in Colossians, but throughout the

New Testament, that have been provided to us that give us graciously inspired revelation concerning the nature of our

God, that since He has chosen to reveal this to us, then we believe there is a reason why

He has done so. He wants us to know these truths about Himself so that we may worship

Him aright. Now, the question we immediately have to ask is, um, let's say you live in the year 400, okay?

You've already got the Council of Nicaea. You've pretty much got the New Testament down pat now.

What would have to happen for you to come to believe that what would be appropriate to worship

God now will not be appropriate 800 years in the future? Well, you'd have to believe that there are either things that scripture is not sufficient to communicate, so there's going to be more scripture or more revelation or something, a new office, an office in the church that provides divinely inspired commentary, something like that.

Or there's going to be need to be some type of development of a tradition that expands upon these things so that someone living in the year 1200 can worship

God more fully and more properly than the person living in 400.

And where, what, what would that be? Where can that come from is really an important question.

It's, it's a question that unfortunately most Reformed folks haven't thought a lot about if they have not taken the time to read a lot of church history in regards to the conflicts that we have had with Rome and the issue of tradition and things like that.

Okay, so now what

I saw that I wanted to respond to on today was, and I was looking at it last night,

I wasn't able to really see who was, I don't know who was posting what, but I was seeing more cancellation, more, you know, nastiness online.

There are a lot of people today who are just dismissing me as a

Trinitarian heretic. They clearly have not listened to anything that I've said.

They've not read any of my works, but they trust and believe what other people say online.

So if a trusted voice says this guy's gone off the rails and they don't care to check these things out for themselves.

And I was thinking about how this has happened over and over again in church history.

You, you cannot avoid the reality that especially as the church became more and more connected to the state, as sacralism grew and grew and not, not a, not a proper sacralism, a, not because there is a wide movement of the

Spirit of God, drawing people to personal faith in Jesus Christ, but it's becoming advantageous.

It's becoming cultural to be a Christian. There's a huge difference between those two, two things.

And you see situation after situation. So let's, let's talk specifically because this, this is what it's about.

I'll make both applications. At some point, I'm not sure if it was on the dividing line or maybe one of my students in the early church history class, maybe there was a spy or maybe someone just mentioned it or something, but someone with a, with a sense of shock made reference to the fact that I said that the

Council of, the Decree of Chalcedon was a compromised document that was influenced by politics.

And their conclusion was, well, that must mean it's wrong. And that must mean he's rejecting Chalcedonian Christology.

You know, and it's, it's, and again, there, there's just going to be, there's just so many people, you know,

Doug Wilson deals with this, I deal with this. There's so many people who are just so prejudiced and so biased and filled with so much animus that it doesn't matter what

I say. It doesn't matter what the context is. It doesn't matter what the facts are. They're going to believe whatever is the most negative possible thing and then repeat that to others, which is why the sin of slander is such a sin.

Anyway, I did say that in early church history when we talked about Council of Chalcedon.

And I think I've, I said it a few weeks ago on the dividing line as well, when

I said, I'd really like to do a whole lot more, do a whole discussion on the Council of Chalcedon because of what

I'd like to do. And I don't, I'm, I don't want to promise. I don't want to promise this at any point in time right now, but what

I'd love to do on the big board in the big studio is to put the, the actual creedal statement and then color code the sections as to which of the groups that are represented in the council would be amenable to that, that this would represent their position and which groups would find that to be one of their problematic statements.

So that then, you know, right afterwards there's another statement where they're sort of thrown a bone and, and talk about Antioch, Alexandria, talk about Pope Leo, and and the friends of, of Eutychians, Eutychians, of course, the

Nestorians, the Apollinarians, and talk about the fact that, for example,

Chalcedon did not unify the church. There are monophysite communities to this day that reject the

Council of Chalcedon. Then again, neither did Nicaea. In fact,

Nicaea had the opposite effect initially. But it would be really interesting to just go, okay, this side was saying

Fusus means this, and this side was saying Apostasis means this, and, and so this side had to change their views, and this side was trying to defend

Cyril of Alexandria, and, and in the middle of all this, you've got the emperor in Constantinople, and that's connected with the politics of Constantinople versus Alexandria, which is just, if you want, if you want cancellation, oh goodness, look at how

Cyril of Alexandria or his monks treated, well, they, they beat Flavian to death.

They beat the, the, the deposed bishop of Constantinople to death.

Okay, I mean, they literally beat him to, and I'm not talking, I'm not talking they abused him in social media.

I'm talking they took their fists, and rocks, and clubs, and whatever, and beat him till he died physically.

Okay, blood, gore, the whole nine yards. So, so the, the animosity between Alexandria and Constantinople is astonishing, and, and then the emperor, the head of the empire now is in Constantinople, not

Rome. Rome's in the, you know, it's in the final stages of falling, depending on exactly where you, where you date that, but 410 has already happened.

The Lyric has already come and gone, and so you've got Rome and Constantinople.

They're fighting with each other, hence you got Canon 28 of Council of Calston, which

Rome never accepted, which basically says that they're all equals, which opens the door for, uh, eventually, since it says the

Pope of Old Rome had this authority because it was the chief city of the empire. Well, now it's not the chief city of the empire.

So what happens now? That opens the whole question there. Leo is defending papal primacy.

He views himself as the infallible vicar of Christ. He, and some people would identify Leo as the first true

Pope. Um, some others would say Gregory, but, um, Leo certainly has a significantly more developed concept of papal supremacy and papal primacy in doctrinal authority and ecclesiastical authority than even

Stephen had, you know, in the days of Cyprian and, and things like that. So you've got that tension and you get a tension in Constantinople and Alexandria going on.

So between the Alexandrian view of Christ, which tends toward Eutychies and the

Antioch view, which tends toward Nestorius. And so the, you've got, and you've got variations amongst them.

I mean, there's, there's not absolute unanimity amongst guys from Antioch, guys from Alexandria, people will switch sides.

And so there's a lot of stuff going on, uh, at the

Council of Constantinople. There really, really is. So no one can dispute that.

I think a bunch of people that were liking these tweets and, I just can't believe it. I really wonder how many of them know any of the major players, any of the major views, any of the background, any of the interaction, how many of them have read

Leo's Tome? I, you know, I really, really wonder how many of them have.

And so if you're, if you're, uh, you know, writing about how whites become a heretic and you haven't read any of that stuff, shut up.

You don't know what you're talking about. You really don't. You're, you're, you're clueless.

Stop it. You're embarrassing yourself because there is absolutely positively no way on God's green earth that you can dispute the reality of the fact that there were all sorts of political and political, not only within the church, but externally with the empire.

I mean, you know, the emperor in Constantinople that calls the council and you cannot deny the fact that these realities existed.

It's just, it's a fact. So, so I'm, I'm, I'm a heretic for stating a fact.

Really? Hmm. Okay. But what this illustrates is, first of all, there, the, the, the amount of cancellation that went on for decades, what happened to John Chrysostom there in Constantinople because the

Alexandrians and, and the back and forth between those two seas. And, you know, we, we do it in social media now.

Chrysostom lost his life because of it. And these are

Christians betraying Christians. That's the sad part of all of this. There's nothing new.

And what would happen is, you know, I've just, I've said this more than once.

I've never been a fan of, of Cyril of Alexandria. I really haven't, obviously a brilliant mind, but just, just really one of the most unlikable characters in early church history.

And you look at how he and his people dealt with Constantinople and people that would represent other perspectives and the kind of nasty derangement syndrome stuff that we're seeing online today.

Um, it's been going on for a long, long time, long, long time. It's just,

I just, I was thinking about the fact that, you know, I commented on this on the dividing line a while back, but that when

Thomas Moore and Martin Luther went at each other, someone estimated that between the two of them, they used every possible

Latin term for excrement that had ever been thought of by the mind of man of each other.

It's been nasty for a long time. And I, I keep that in mind as, as people who won't represent me accurately.

Well, well, you know, I've been talking about this stuff for decades. They don't care or they're constantly trying to, well,

I, you said this at one point, now you say this and, and they, they have no interest whatsoever in fairness or balance.

They're just filled with animus. Sometimes they're filled with jealousy is what they're filled with. They think they should be doing the stuff

I've gotten to do. Um, but you, you, you just, when that happens,

I'm just reminded that it comes with the territory. Ain't the first time.

Shouldn't be that way. I, I, I get it. It shouldn't be that way, but it is, it is.

That's, that's the reality. And so that sort of helps to deal with it because, you know, a lot of what's coming at me is coming from my own group.

The people that are supposed to be my buds, people that have been people that have supported me in the past.

And we've, we've worked together and taught in their churches and taught in their schools. And now they're the ones doing the cancellation.

And it's like, yep, that's not new. Not that first time that's happened.

You, you can go back in church history. That is one of the blessings or curses, depending how you want to look at it, of being a church history professor is yep, yep, yep.

We've seen this before. And so yeah, the cancellation thing, nothing new. Secondly, uh, when

I was in seminary, when I was doing, I took a systematic theology class at Fuller Theological Seminary, probably 1984,

I would say. No, no, no, no, no, no. It can't be. 1988. And I was, now my systematic theology professor was an interesting fellow, very sharp guy.

He was good at telling you what people in the past believe, but not so good at telling you what he himself believed.

Um, it was more of a history of theology than an actual systematic theology class, but I made the best of it.

I had learned to do that by that point in time. And I wrote a paper in that class and I had to ask him if I could write it longer than what was, uh, required or limitations and things like that.

And, uh, so I wrote, uh, the Trinity, the

Definition of Calisthenics and Oneness Theology. The Trinity, the Definition of Calisthenics and Oneness Theology.

And when I, now I had taken church history.

In fact, by then I'd probably taken the class three different times because I enjoyed the teacher so much. But, but when you're covering so much space and I had this frustration, uh, two weekends ago when

I, when I taught, um, early church history, you, there's just so, you know,

I didn't even get to cover John Chrysostom almost at all. And we sort of had to rush toward the end.

And that's just what happens when you do these types of classes. And that was types of classes

I had back then as well. Dr. Feldman, my professor would fly in and we'd only have so much time.

Anyway, uh, I, when I wrote that paper,

I simply imbibed a, uh, a view and a concept regarding creeds, ecumenical creeds.

You know, it was like, well, they just sort of have this special authority, you see, because they're ecumenical.

And I, I, I knew like, for example, that Nicaea had had to fight for acceptance.

And, uh, you know, I, I understood that, but I hadn't really gotten to the point of recognizing that, you know,

I hadn't been forced yet because I wasn't dealing with Roman Catholicism yet to think through ultimate sources of authority.

And so it's, it's real easy to just go, well, you know,

I had heard Norm Geisler say something about the first seven ecumenical councils.

It's like, oh, well, that sounds like we're supposed to just go, yeah, the first seven ecumenical councils. Didn't really know what they were about.

Hadn't read much about them. Never thought about the relationship of scriptural authority to church authority and what churches are behind these things, any of that kind of stuff.

We just hadn't even, just didn't even enter the end of the mind really. It's just, well, they're ecumenical councils and we accept them and we go from there.

And so I wasn't looking at the Council of Chalcedon historically.

My paper really focused on key biblical texts that addressed the important issues that were raised by Chalcedon in regards to the relationship of the divine and human natures.

In Jesus, one person, two natures, what does that mean? What's the hypothetic union? How does this, how is this related to Apollinarianism, Eutychianism, et cetera, et cetera, especially in the stories.

Really didn't have any bead at that point in time on Leo's Tome or what that would, how that's relevant and how important it is, things like that at all.

But I think that's how the vast majority of Protestant evangelicals, when they are even aware of, okay,

Council of Chalcedon, fourth to one, middle of fifth century, okay, all right, how these are related, let alone any idea of the background and hence when

I've gotten in trouble now for saying that the proper authority of any of these councils has to be derived from its fidelity description.

And the problem is, if you create a system based upon some type of external development of theology over time and then say, this must now be the lens through which you interpret scripture, then you don't seem to realize you're not going to be able to hold the

Sola Scriptura, not consistently anyways. I know lots of people who have never been pushed, they've never been put in a position of being forced to see that they're functioning inconsistently.

But I'm put in that position every time I walk on the debate stage. And that's what

I do. And so I have to think those things through. And dealing with Roman Catholicism, especially, and their sharp apologists gave me the opportunity to do that.

And so when people lose their minds on social media and go, he's going to abandon

Chalcedon. Well, what is the essence of Chalcedon that a true believer is holding to and why?

When I first heard about it, when

I first dealt with it, I didn't have the right reasons for holding to Chalcedon, but I do now.

And so you go through each of those phrases and the weight of the authority does not come from the council.

It comes from, all right, Jesus, or Paul, for example, describes, he uses the terminology, they would not have crucified the

Lord of glory. How do you crucify the Lord of glory? Crucifixion is a physical act.

It takes place in time and history. The Lord of glory, that's an exalted term for Christ, for deity.

So here you have Paul functioning in a Chalcedonian manner.

And it's that kind of theanoustas revelation that has to be seen as foundational and determinative for the truthfulness of the words of Chalcedon, not the other way around.

And as soon as you say, no, you start with Chalcedon and that's how you understand those words, you no longer believe in any form of solo scriptura at all.

You may not know it yet. You may not realize you've punched your ticket across the

Tiber or across the Bosporus, or at least to someplace in England.

But you have. You just, you just don't, you haven't been put in the position.

You have not been placed in the pressure cooker. The pressure cooker demonstrates where the inconsistencies are.

The pressure cooker demonstrates where you're literally contradicting yourself. And so people lose their mind when

I, I make a completely indisputable, unremarkable comment about the historical reality of the council of Chalcedon.

What are those people going to do when they run into someone who's seeking to destroy their faith that knows the same things

I know? Because it's, it's public knowledge. It's out there.

You may not know it, but it's public knowledge. You got to deal with it. And what if they want to use it to destroy their faith?

Where they can do that? I don't know. I don't know. But these are the, these are,

I fully understand why a lot of folks are like, you know, this seems like it's just getting so complicated.

Well, it's not so much that it's complicated.

It's that you need to, you need to know what has happened in the past and why it happened.

And it does help a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot to have that basic knowledge of church history.

So you can at least put yourself in the context so as to understand where the terminology you're using came from.

We use so much specific language that was defined as a part of church history.

And if we don't, we don't know that, then we can't really examine what it is that, that may be under dispute today.

We may be having a big dispute today and not realize this has been disputed 47 times before for crying out loud.

Don't you think it's important to know how they handled it in the past? Well, for a lot of folks, not so much, but it is important.

So there you go. There's, there's a lengthy, I don't even know how lengthy that was, 39 minutes, not as long as yesterday, but 40 minute long discussion, a little jaunt through church history at, well, it's not 75 miles per hour.

I had to go through some construction zones there. It was going pretty slowly, but back up to speed now as we're heading, heading home today.

And Lord willing to some in -studio dividing lines, maybe, maybe tomorrow.

I don't know. I've got so much to catch up on now that it's, it's tough to say, but we'll see. We'll see if we can't squeeze one in and not be completely exhausted by then, but we'll do our best.

So thanks for listening to the dividing line, driving line, whatever you want to call it.

I thank you for putting up with the background noise and all the rest of that kind of stuff. It's just what's necessary to do when you're, you're driving down the road by yourself with your cell phone.

That's all you got. So thanks for listening. Hope it's useful to you. We'll see you next time.