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Ancient Theology · Reformed Thinking

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  Imagine you are standing in a crowded, just sweltering room in
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  the year 325 AD. Oh wow, yeah, setting the scene.
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  Right. And you're surrounded by 300
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  furious men, and a lot of them, you know, they still bear the
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  actual physical scars of torture from the Roman government.
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  Which is just a wild thing to picture.
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  Yeah, and they're shouting. They're debating drawing lines
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  in the sand over a single one letter difference in a Greek
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  word. Just one letter.
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  Just one letter. If they pick the wrong one, the
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  entire religion basically falls apart.
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  The fate of global Christianity is hanging by a literal iota.
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  Is quite the visual. Welcome to Reform Thinking.
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  For this deep dive, we are opening up Paul Enz's revised
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  and expanded Moody Handbook of Theology to look really closely
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  at ancient theology. Yeah, the early centuries.
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  Right. The mission today is to
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  understand how the early Christian Church clarified its
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  beliefs, defended against some truly bizarre errors, and
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  solidified the core doctrines that define historic Orthodox
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  Christianity. The very same doctrines that
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  align with the Westminster Confession today, which we
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  obviously adhere to. Spot on.
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  And for you listening, looking at this, history is not about
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  just dusting off some old books. No, not at all.
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  It is about realizing that almost every modern theological
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  debate you see on social media or here at a coffee shop is just
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  a recycled version of a conversation that happened over
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  1500 years ago. Yeah, there was really nothing
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  new under the sun. We're looking at a time when the
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  ink was barely dry on the New Testament.
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  You know, believers were forced to figure out how to articulate
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  their faith to an openly hostile world.
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  They had to define what they believed about God, about Jesus,
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  human nature, the future. And it wasn't just a quiet
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  academic exercise, either. Not even close.
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  It was an absolute fight for survival.
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  So let's jump right in. The first major hurdle the early
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  church faced was explaining their invisible God to a Roman
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  culture that was just utterly obsessed with physical, tangible
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  idols. Yeah, it was everywhere.
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  You couldn't walk down a Roman St. without passing shrines,
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  statues, temples. I mean the whole economy
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  basically ran on idol making. Right, and we see the Christian
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  response brilliantly laid out in early writings by figures we
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  call the apologists. There is this one document, the
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  Epistle to Diognetus, and it sets up this massive contrast.
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  It states that the Creator of the universe planted truth
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  directly into the hearts of men, contrasting God's direct
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  revelation with the sort of speculative blind guessing of
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  the philosophers and the. Apologists were essentially the
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  defense attorneys for the early Christian faith, right?
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  Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
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  And that Epistle to Diagnitis does something really clever.
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  Instead of just quoting Jewish scriptures, which, let's be
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  honest, a Roman Pagan wouldn't care about at all, it attacks
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  the sheer absurdity of Pagan idolatry using pure logic.
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  Oh, absolutely. The author points out the
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  futility of worshipping gods made of wood and stone.
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  Because they rot. Right.
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  They decay. He knows that they are made of
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  the very same stone that people walk on or build houses with and
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  just discard every single day. And he brings up gods made of
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  silver and gold too. He points out that they actually
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  have to be locked up at night and guarded to prevent them from
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  being stolen. Which is hilarious when you
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  think about it. I mean, if your God needs a
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  padlock and a nighttime security guard to survive till morning,
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  is that really a God? Not a very strong one.
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  You are building a high tech security system to protect a
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  supposedly almighty being. The logic just completely
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  collapses under its own weight. And that is the logical gap the
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  apologists were trying to expose.
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  You can't have the mastering creator of the universe, who
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  arranged all things in order, just sitting vulnerable in a
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  local temple waiting for a petty thief to melt him down for
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  packet change. Prior to God's revelation, the
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  apologist argued, people had no idea what he was like.
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  They were just guessing, projecting their own human flaws
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  under these marble statues. But through revelation, they
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  learned he is kindly, dispassionate, true patient.
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  Yeah, the epistle highlights that humanity deserved
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  punishment, but God was long-suffering and sent his Son
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  as a ransom. I am stuck on this communication
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  aspect though. Let's say I am a Pagan Roman
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  walking down the street and I hear these Christians talking
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  about this invisible son. Am I even listening to that?
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  Probably not at first. Right.
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  So to explain that son to a Greek speaking, philosophically
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  minded culture, the apologists use the concept of the logos.
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  Yeah, the logos. But if I'm a Pagan, why do I
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  care about this word? Does using my own philosophical
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  buzzwords actually work to convince me?
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  Well, it works because it builds a bridge from the known to the
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  unknown. The term logos translates
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  roughly to word or discourse. OK.
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  In Greek philosophy, particularly Stoicism, the Logos
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  was the rational principle that gave order to the universe.
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  So it's like the logic behind everything.
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  Yes. It was the reason the planets
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  moved in harmony, the reason mathematics worked, the abstract
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  logic behind reality itself. But the apologists, guys like
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  Justin Martyr and Ethan Agaris, they took that familiar term and
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  filled it with biblical reality. Well, I should say spot on.
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  They argue that crisis is the logos, not an abstract concept,
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  but an actual person. Right, He is the actual
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  discourse of God, communicating truth directly to mankind.
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  Yeah, Ethan Agris wrote that God, being eternal mind, had his
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  word within himself from the very beginning.
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  So Christ wasn't some created being.
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  He was the mind and Word of the Father, eternal and uncreated,
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  who actually stepped right into human history.
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  Athenagoras also gives us some of the earliest clear statements
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  on monotheism and the Trinity. He does, yeah.
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  He referred to the Holy Spirit as an effluence flowing from God
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  and returning like a ray of the sun.
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  But what does effluence even mean to a normal person?
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  Think of a river flowing out of a spring, or, you know, heat
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  radiating off a fire. OK, I can picture that.
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  It is a substance flowing out from a source, but it is made of
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  the exact same material as the source.
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  Got it. Athenagris is trying to express
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  that the Holy Spirit comes from God and is God, just as a ray of
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  sunlight is made of the sun's actual light.
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  And Justin Martyr also spoke of the Trinity placing the sun in
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  the second place and the prophetic spirit in the third
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  rink. They were just desperately
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  trying to give vocabulary to this massive concept of one God
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  in three distinct persons. And they were doing all of this
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  while under extreme persecution from the government.
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  Oh yeah, literal life and death stakes.
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  But once the outside was momentarily managed, or at least
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  somewhat understood, the inside of the church got incredibly
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  messy. Very messy.
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  The greatest threats stopped being the Pagan outsiders and
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  started being insiders. A whole wave of strange early
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  movements rose up, all claiming to be the true original version
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  of Christianity. Right.
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  And some of the earliest, most bitter debates were about how
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  Christianity related to its Jewish roots, specifically the
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  Mosaic Law. Yeah, we see early Jewish
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  Christian sects handling this in wildly different ways.
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  You have the Nazarenes, who are essentially Jewish believers in
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  Jesus. And they strictly kept the
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  Mosaic Law for themselves. Right, yeah, Sabbath keeping
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  circumcision dietary rules, but they didn't force those rules on
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  Gentile converts. Which is a big deal.
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  Huge. They accepted the virgin birth,
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  the deity of Jesus, and they even recognized the Apostle
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  Paul's authority, which was a major dividing line.
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  Wait, why was accepting Paul such a massive dividing line?
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  Because Paul is the one who aggressively taught that
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  believers are justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
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  Oh wait, right? For a 1st century Jewish person
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  whose entire national and religious identity was wrapped
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  up keeping the law, Paul's message was totally scandalous.
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  Yeah, but the Nazarenes found a way to balance it.
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  They kept their cultural practices without making them a
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  requirement for salvation. But then you have the ibianites
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  who went in a completely different direction.
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  The Ibianites denied the virgin birth entirely.
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  Wow. Yeah, they denied the deity of
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  Christ outright. They taught Jesus was just the
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  natural son of Mary and Joseph, a regular biological man who
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  just happened to be a really good prophet because he kept the
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  law perfectly. And because of their obsession
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  with the law, the Ibianites considered Paul an outright
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  apostate. They hated him.
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  They viewed Paul as a literal traitor to Judaism.
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  Then there are the Elkosites, who add this element of bizarre
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  mysticism to the whole mix. Oh this script is wild.
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  Yeah, they claimed an Angel who is supposedly miles tall gave a
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  sacred book to a man named Elkosai.
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  Miles. Tall.
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  That's what they claimed, and they taught that Christ was an
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  Angel born of human parents, totally rejecting the virgin
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  birth. So they believe Jesus was just
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  the highest Archangel. Yes, and they insist the law,
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  including Sabbath keeping in circumcision, was completely
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  binding on absolutely everyone. So you have these groups
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  struggling with the law, but then things get incredibly
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  strange when Greek philosophy violently collides with the
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  church, creating Gnosticism. Yeah, we hear the term Gnostic
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  thrown around a lot today, usually in movies or weird
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  Internet conspiracy theories. But historical Gnosticism was a
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  massive destructive system. The the word comes from gnosis,
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  meaning knowledge. Right.
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  It was built on the fundamental philosophical premise of the
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  time, heavily influenced by Plato, that physical matter is
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  inherently evil and only the unseen spirit is good.
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  So if matter is evil, dirty and corrupting, then the Supreme God
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  who is purely spirit and perfectly good, couldn't
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  possibly have created the physical world.
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  Exactly. I mean yes, that's their logic.
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  A perfect God would never dirty hear his hands with gross
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  biological matter. So to solve this philosophical
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  problem, the Gnostics invented a ridiculously complex hierarchy.
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  They constructed a series of emanations or eons, right?
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  Hold on, What did they picture when they said emanations like
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  radio waves coming off a cell tower?
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  That is actually a great way to picture it.
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  Imagine the Supreme God is a blazing lighthouse.
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  OK, a lighthouse. As the light travels further
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  away from the bulb, it gets weaker and dimmer.
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  These eons were like descending tears of divine beings.
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  Oh, I see. Each one is a little less
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  divine, a little less perfect, and a little further away from
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  the Supreme God than the last one.
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  And way down at the bottom of this long chain where the light
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  is almost completely faded out, you find an intermediate being
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  they called the Demiurge. Yes, and according to
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  Gnosticism, the Demiurge is the God of the Old Testament.
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  He had just enough residual spirit lest to have creative
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  ability, but enough ignorance and flaw in him to create the
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  physical world. The Gnostics absolutely despise
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  this Old Testament God. They thought creating the
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  physical universe was a massive, embarrassing mistake.
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  And because of that premise that matter is evil and the physical
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  world is a mistake, their view of Jesus was totally warped.
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  They couldn't accept that a pure divine spirit would ever take on
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  a disgusting physical human body.
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  Right. God incarnating into a human
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  whose sweats, bleeds and gets sick was totally repulsive to
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  them. So they split into two camps to
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  explain Jesus away. One camp said Jesus only
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  appeared to have a physical body.
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  He was basically a phantom, like a hologram who left no
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  footprints in the sand and only seemed to suffer on the cross.
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  And the other camp said the divine Logos descended upon the
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  regular human man. Jesus had his baptism, but then
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  right before the crucifixion, the divine Spirit just bailed
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  out. Just abandoned him.
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  Yeah, leaving only the regular human man to die on the cross.
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  They wanted to protect God from the messiness of physical
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  matter. And their view of salvation was
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  entirely philosophical. You weren't saved by grace
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  through faith in a historical event.
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  You were saved by acquiring secret knowledge.
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  Knowledge imported only to a select initiated few.
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  You had to learn the passwords to get past the cosmic bouncers
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  in the afterlife. That sounds exhausting.
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  Sin wasn't a moral failure or a rebellion against a holy God.
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  It was just ignorance. There is a modern connection
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  here too. Yeah, Christian Science holds
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  very similar views today regarding the illusory nature of
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  physical matter and sin. That's fascinating.
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  Another massive threat, right on the heels of Gnosticism was
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  Martianism. Oh, Martian.
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  Yeah, Martian was a very wealthy ship owner who came to Rome
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  around 139 AD. He took the Gnostic dislike for
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  the Old Testament to the absolute extreme.
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  He really did. He believed the God of the Old
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  Testament was an evil, wrathful, bloodthirsty creator who is
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  completely opposed to the merciful, loving God of the New
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  Testament revealed by Jesus. Martian basically wanted to
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  uncouple Christianity entirely from its Jewish roots.
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  He felt the Jewish influence was a corruption, so he just threw
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  out most of the Bible. Just tossed it.
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  He rejected the entire Old Testament.
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  He threw out most of the gospels because they quoted the Old
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  Testament too much, keeping only a heavily edited, chopped up
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  version of Luke. And he kept just 10 of Paul's
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  letters. And again, he edited out
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  anything he didn't like. Marcion is like someone taking a
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  massive legendary discography from an artist, creating a
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  custom playlist of just a few tracks they personally like,
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  deleting all the other songs from the Internet and declaring
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  that tiny playlist to be the only official real album.
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  That is a brilliant analogy. He just hacked the Bible to
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  pieces to fit his bias. He argued that Jesus this was
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  not the Jewish Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament,
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  and that Jesus didn't even have a real physical body.
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  Marcion taught a salvation by faith, setting himself apart
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  from the Gnostics who pushed salvation by secret knowledge,
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  but his version of faith was grounded in a completely
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  mutilated version of Scripture. And because he was wealthy, he
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  gave a massive sum of money to the church in Rome to try and
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  buy influence for his theology. Money always complicates that.
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  Always. Then we swing to a totally
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  different extreme. Montanism.
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  Montanas was from Phrygia in Asia Minor.
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  At his baptism, he supposedly fell into a trance, spoke in
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  tongues, and declared that the age of the Holy Spirit had
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  finally arrived. He claimed the end of the world
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  was near and that the New Jerusalem was going to
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  physically drop out of the sky and land in his hometown,
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  starting the millennial age. Very convenient that it was
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  landing in his hometown, right? Montana's taught that he and two
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  of his female disciples, Priscilla and Maximila, were the
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  final ultimate prophets. He claimed to be the direct
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  mouthpiece for the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit.
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  And he demanded strict moral requirements from his followers,
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  extreme fasting, bizarre diets, prohibiting second marriages and
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  heavily encouraging people to offer themselves up for
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  martyrdom. And he found a massive
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  following. He even converted the brilliant
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  early theologian Tertullian at one point, which really shows
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  how persuasive of this movement was.
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  I'm looking at the sources and they note that Montanas was
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  actually generally orthodox in his core doctrinal beliefs about
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  God in the Trinity. Yeah, he didn't deny the deity
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  of Christ like the others did. So why was his movement
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  considered so incredibly dangerous that the Church felt
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  forced to condemn it at the Council of Constantinople in
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  381AD? The danger with Montanism wasn't
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  his view of the Trinity, it was his view of authority and
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  revelation. Well, by claiming that he and
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  his prophetesses were receiving new direct, authoritative
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  revelation from the Holy Spirit, he was bypassing the authority
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  of the apostles and the written Scriptures.
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  I see. If Montana speaks for God today,
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  then the Bible is no longer the final standard.
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  If his new prophecies contradict Paul or Jesus, who wins?
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  It creates A chaotic, unstable foundation for the church where
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  truth constantly shifts based on whoever claims to have the
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  latest, most spectacular vision. Spot on.
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  If I'm a regular person sitting in a house church in the 2nd
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  century, my head is absolutely spinning.
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  I can't even imagine. I have Gnostics telling me the
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  physical world is evil and offering secret passwords.
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  I have Marcion telling you the Old Testament God is a demon and
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  handing me a chopped up gospel. And Montana's falling into
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  trance is telling you the world is ending next Tuesday.
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  Right. How does a regular person know
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  what to actually believe? This absolute chaos is what
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  forced the early church leaders to establish a concrete
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  standard. Which leads directly to the
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  creation of the Rule of Faith and the official Canon of
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  Scripture. The rule of faith, or regular
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  fede in Latin was developed specifically to determine true
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  doctrine and reject false teaching.
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  Because in an era where most people were illiterate and
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  couldn't just go buy a personal copy of the Bible, they needed a
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  short, memorizable summary of the Christian faith.
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  Right in its earliest form, it was simply the baptismal formula
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  found in Matthew 28.1 Hein recognizing the Father, Son and
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  Holy Spirit. Over time, as specific heresies
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  popped up, that simple formula evolved into the old Roman form,
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  which was a brief statement of faith used widely by the middle
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  of the 2nd century. By around 340 AD, this developed
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  into what we now know as the Apostles Creed.
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  What's fascinating is that the Apostles Creed wasn't written
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  to. No, it functioned like a highly
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  specific software security patch.
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  Yeah, it was designed to target the exact viruses that were
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  attacking the early church's operating system.
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  Every single line of the creed is a strategic, calculated
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  strike against a heresy we just discussed.
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  Like when the congregation stood up and recited I believe in God
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  the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
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  There's a direct fatal blow to Marcion and the Gnostics, who
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  claimed the physical world was made by an evil lesser Demiurge.
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  The Creed, he insists, the Supreme God made the dirt and
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  the stars, and therefore the physical world is inherently
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  good. And when it states that Jesus
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  suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried,
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  it obliterates the Gnostic and ascetic idea that Jesus was just
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  a phantom. You can't arrest a phantom.
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  You can't crucify a hologram. You definitely cannot bury an
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  illusion in a physical tomb. The creed anchors the Christian
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  faith in gritty, physical, historical reality.
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  It forces the believer to confess that God became flesh.
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  Alongside standardizing the Creed, the Church had to
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  establish the Canon of the New Testament.
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  They had to draw a hard line around which books were inspired
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  by God and which were not. In the early days, Paul's
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  letters were already being read and recognized as authoritative
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  in the churches. Yeah, and Irenaeus officially
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  recognized the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to
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  counter the Gnostics who are busy writing their own fake
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  mystical gospels. And to counter Marcian, who only
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  wanted his edited version of Luke.
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  By 175, Ada document called the Meritorian Canon listed almost
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  all the New Testament books we use today.
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  And finally, in 367 AD, Athanasia sent out an Easter
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  letter listing all 27 books exactly as we have them now.
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  It was a long process. Let me throw a controversial
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  thought at you though. Is it historically accurate to
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  say Marcian actually did the church a massive favor by
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  forcing them to officially list the canonical books?
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  You know, in a strange, providential way, yes, Marcy
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  enforced the issue. Really.
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  Yeah. Before him, the churches
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  generally knew which books were authoritative, but they hadn't
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  felt the urgent need to publish an exclusive finalist.
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  So by producing a false, truncated, edited Canon, Marxian
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  made it absolutely necessary for the Orthodox Church leaders to
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  formally recognize and list the true, complete Canon to protect
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  their congregations. The truth of which books
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  belonged was always there, but the well funded confrontation
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  catalyzed the official documentation.
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  Establishing the Canon and a unified creed was a huge step
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  forward, but the specific words in that creed, especially
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  concerning the exact relationship between God the
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  Father and Jesus the Son, sparked the most intense, drawn
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  out, politically charged debates in all of church history.
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  Oh, the Trinitarian controversy has tested the Church to its
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  absolute limits. The core tension they were
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  wrestling with was monumental. On one hand, they had to
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  fiercely maintain the Old Testament truth that God is 1.
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  Monotheism is the bedrock of Judaism.
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  On the other hand, they had to affirm the New Testament truth
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  that Jesus Christ is God. And early on, the Church really
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  struggled to find the right philosophical vocabulary to
• 20:03
  articulate this mystery. The first major theological
• 20:06
  crash regarding this tension was called Monarchanism, which came
• 20:09
  in two distinct forms. The first is dynamic monarchism
• 20:13
  pushed by guys like Theodotus and Paul of Somasada.
• 20:17
  And what did they teach? They taught that Christ was just
• 20:19
  a regular biological man, but a divine, impersonal power, the
• 20:25
  Logos, gradually penetrated his humanity.
• 20:27
  So Jesus was just a really good guy who got filled with divine
• 20:31
  power more than any other person, and eventually God
• 20:34
  adopted and deified him. Yeah, so Jesus wasn't eternal
• 20:37
  God who came down. He was a man who got promoted to
• 20:40
  divine status because he was so incredibly obedient.
• 20:43
  That view successfully maintained the strict oneness of
• 20:46
  God, but it completely lost the distinct persons of the Trinity
• 20:50
  and it denied the eternal pre existence of Christ.
• 20:52
  The second, much more popular form was Realistic Monarchy ISM.
• 20:56
  You will also hear this called Sibelianism, named after one of
• 20:59
  its main teachers, Sibelius. This view taught that there is
• 21:02
  only one God, a single person, but he switches modes or masks
• 21:06
  depending on what he's doing in history.
• 21:08
  Sometimes he acts as the Creator Father, sometimes he puts on the
• 21:11
  mask of the Redeemer Son, and sometimes he operates as the
• 21:14
  sanctifying Holy Spirit. Modalism is basically just one
• 21:17
  actor playing three roles in a movie.
• 21:19
  Oh, that's a perfect way to describe it.
• 21:20
  The actor puts on a Gray wig to play the grandfather, takes it
• 21:24
  off to play the father, and then puts on a baseball cap to play
• 21:27
  the son. But because it's just one single
• 21:29
  actor, all three characters can never appear in the exact same
• 21:33
  scene at the exact same time and talk to each other.
• 21:35
  Which creates a massive biblical problem when you read the New
• 21:38
  Testament. Just look at the account of
• 21:40
  Jesus's baptism in the Jordan River, right?
• 21:43
  The Son is physically in the water.
• 21:45
  The Father is audibly speaking from heaven, saying this is my
• 21:49
  beloved Son, and the Spirit is visually descending like a dove.
• 21:53
  All three are present interacting simultaneously.
• 21:55
  Modalism just collapses there. It also led to a highly
• 21:58
  controversial concept called Petri Passionism.
• 22:01
  What's that? If God is just one person
• 22:03
  switching masks, then the Father himself was born as the Son, and
• 22:07
  the Father himself suffered and died on the cross.
• 22:10
  Apraxius, a major proponent, literally said the Father became
• 22:13
  his own son. The Church rejected modalism,
• 22:16
  but then they faced an even bigger, much more persuasive
• 22:19
  threat, Arianism. Arias was a presbyter in
• 22:23
  Alexandria and he taught that only the Father is the eternal,
• 22:27
  unbegotten God. His famous catchy slogan was
• 22:30
  There was a time when the son did not exist.
• 22:33
  Arias argued that the Son was the 1st and highest created,
• 22:36
  being created out of absolutely nothing by the Father.
• 22:40
  Therefore, Jesus was not of the same substance as the Father.
• 22:44
  He was a creature. And Arianism spread like
• 22:46
  wildfire. Arias was a brilliant
• 22:48
  communicator. He.
• 22:49
  Actually put his theology into popular sea shanties and
• 22:52
  bartoons. Wait, really?
• 22:53
  Sea shanties. Yeah, dock workers and merchants
• 22:56
  were seeing his theology in the streets.
• 22:58
  It was incredibly persuasive because it seemed so logical to
• 23:01
  human reason. I mean, if Jesus is a son, well,
• 23:03
  sons have beginnings. Fathers exist before sons.
• 23:06
  But a man named Athanasius saw the fatal flaw in this logic.
• 23:09
  Athanasius defended the eternal existence of the Son, arguing
• 23:12
  that if Christ is a created being, even the highest created
• 23:15
  being, he cannot possibly save us.
• 23:18
  Because a creature cannot redeem other creatures.
• 23:20
  Only the infinite God can save humanity.
• 23:23
  This massive clash led to the Council of Nicaea in 325AD.
• 23:28
  The Roman Emperor Constantine, who had recently legalized
• 23:31
  Christianity, called 300 bishops together to settle the issue
• 23:35
  because the theological riots were threatening to literally
• 23:38
  tear his empire apart. The council condemned Arianism
• 23:41
  and adopted the Nicene Creed, introducing A crucial game
• 23:45
  changing Greek word Homo, ocean meaning same substance.
• 23:49
  Christ is of the identical substance in essence as the
• 23:53
  Father. They use phrases like begotten
• 23:55
  not made to stress His eternal nature.
• 23:59
  The linguistic and philosophical states of that one word, Homo
• 24:02
  ocean, cannot be overstated. The Aryans pushed back hard.
• 24:06
  They wanted to compromise with a slightly different word, home
• 24:09
  ocean, which means of a similar substance.
• 24:11
  It is a difference of one single letter, the letter I or iota in
• 24:14
  Greek. But Athanasius knew that if you
• 24:16
  accept that one letter, you lose the gospel.
• 24:19
  If Christ is only like God, but not actually God, the entire
• 24:22
  foundation of salvation crumbles into dust.
• 24:25
  Athanasius was banished multiple times.
• 24:27
  He was driven into exile by emperors, haunted by political
• 24:30
  enemies, and spent years hiding in the desert, all to defend
• 24:33
  that one specific Greek word. He really went through a lot.
• 24:36
  Why go through all that suffering just to split hairs
• 24:38
  over an iota? Because Athanasius understood
• 24:42
  that theology dictates reality, he famously stood Athanasius
• 24:47
  contramundum Athanasius against the world.
• 24:50
  If you concede that one letter, you concede the deity of Christ.
• 24:54
  And if Christ is a creature, then our worship of Him is
• 24:57
  blatant idolatry. Furthermore, if a mere creature
• 25:00
  died on the cross, his death lacks the infinite value
• 25:03
  required to pay the infinite debt for the sins of the world.
• 25:07
  Athanasius stood his ground because he believed the
• 25:09
  salvation of the human race was on the line.
• 25:11
  After Nicaea, the debate naturally shifted to the Holy
• 25:14
  Spirit. Arius had taught the Spirit was
• 25:16
  a creation of the Son. Later, a man named Macedonius
• 25:19
  claimed the spirit was a subordinate creature,
• 25:21
  essentially like an Angel serving the father and son.
• 25:24
  It wasn't until the Council of Constantinople in 381AD that the
• 25:29
  Church officially settled the matter.
• 25:30
  They expanded the creed to declare that the Holy Spirit is
• 25:33
  the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and is
• 25:36
  worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the
• 25:39
  Son. So by 381 the orthodox doctrine
• 25:42
  of the Trinity is firmly established.
• 25:44
  God is 1 essence existing in three distinct coequal Co
• 25:49
  eternal persons. But once the church universally
• 25:52
  agreed that Jesus was fully God and fully man, the next logical
• 25:56
  hurdle appeared immediately. They had to figure out the
• 25:58
  mechanics of the incarnation. How do those two distinct
• 26:01
  natures, divine and human, coexist in one single person
• 26:05
  without destroying each other? Which brings us to the
• 26:07
  crystallological pendulum. Looking at the history, trying
• 26:11
  to explain how the incarnation actually worked resulted in a
• 26:14
  violent pendulum swing. Every time theologians tried to
• 26:17
  correct 1 error, they overcorrected, swung too far,
• 26:21
  and smashed right into a brand new heresy on the opposite end
• 26:24
  of the spectrum. The first major swing was
• 26:26
  Apollinarianism. Apollinaris was a strong ally of
• 26:29
  Athanasius. He wanted to vigorously defend
• 26:32
  the deity of Christ against Arianism.
• 26:34
  But to do so, he severely compromised Christ's humanity.
• 26:38
  He taught a psychological view where the divine Logos literally
• 26:41
  took the place of the human spirit or mind in Jesus.
• 26:44
  So Jesus had a physical human body and an animal like human
• 26:48
  soul that animated the body, but his rational inner spirit was
• 26:53
  purely divine. Apolloneris thought the human
• 26:55
  mind and spirit with a seed of sin, the part of us that rebels
• 26:59
  against God. So he just removed the human
• 27:02
  spirit from Jesus to keep him sinless.
• 27:05
  It's like a divine driver hijacking a human car.
• 27:08
  The chassis, the steering wheel, and the tires are human, but the
• 27:11
  guy sitting in the driver's seat steering the vehicle is
• 27:14
  exclusively divine. The problem there is if Jesus
• 27:18
  does not have a human spirit or a human mind, he is not fully
• 27:21
  human. The early Church Father Gregory
• 27:23
  of Nasianzis shut this down with a famous quote.
• 27:27
  That which he has not assumed, he has not healed.
• 27:29
  If the Word didn't take on a human mind and spirit, he cannot
• 27:32
  save our human minds and spirits.
• 27:34
  Apollinarianism was condemned in 381AD.
• 27:37
  So the church rejects that, and the pendulum swings violently to
• 27:40
  the other side. Nestorianism.
• 27:42
  Nestorius was the Bishop of Constantinople.
• 27:45
  He was reacting to people in his city calling the Virgin Mary the
• 27:47
  Theotokos, which means the God Bearer or Mother of God.
• 27:51
  Nestorius hated that phrase because it sounded like Mary
• 27:54
  actually created the divine nature, which is obviously
• 27:57
  impossible. So to protect the distinct
• 27:59
  separation of the divine and human natures, Nestorius went
• 28:03
  too far and effectively split Jesus into two separate persons.
• 28:07
  He denied a real organic union between the two natures.
• 28:10
  Under Nestorianism, you don't have the God man, you have God
• 28:14
  and a man sort of loosely attached to each other, acting
• 28:16
  in tandem. It is like taping 2 completely
• 28:19
  different objects together, a brick and a piece of wood,
• 28:22
  without them actually mixing or relating internally.
• 28:24
  Nestorius taught that only the human Jesus suffered on the
• 28:27
  cross, while the divine Christ stood back and remained totally
• 28:31
  uninvolved. It completely ruins the intimacy
• 28:33
  of the incarnation. If only a human died, we are
• 28:36
  back to the Aryan problem. Nestorianism was condemned at
• 28:39
  the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD.
• 28:42
  The condemnation of Nestorius forces the pendulum back the
• 28:45
  other way, leading to Uticianism, also known as the
• 28:48
  Monophysite Heresy. Utites was an older monk who
• 28:51
  hated Nestorianism. He wanted to avoid splitting
• 28:55
  Jesus into two persons at all costs, so he jammed the two
• 28:58
  natures together so hard that they merged and mutated.
• 29:01
  He taught that the human nature was entirely absorbed by the
• 29:04
  divine nature, like a drop of vinegar dissolved in the ocean.
• 29:08
  It is like throwing 2 distinct ingredients, say strawberries
• 29:11
  and bananas into a blender and hitting puree on the highest
• 29:14
  setting. You get a smoothie where you can
• 29:16
  no longer identify the original parts.
• 29:18
  The strawberries? Gone.
• 29:19
  The banana is gone. You took he's created a brand
• 29:22
  new third nature that was neither fully human nor fully
• 29:26
  divine. Is a weird hybrid.
• 29:28
  This was finally condemned at the Council of Chacodon in 451
• 29:32
  AD, where the Orthodox view was finalized in a brilliant
• 29:35
  statement. The Council declared that Jesus
• 29:37
  is one person with two distinct natures, and those natures are
• 29:40
  united without confusion, without change, without
• 29:43
  division, and without separation.
• 29:45
  Hold those massive truths in perfect, balanced tension.
• 29:49
  And this isn't just abstract philosophy.
• 29:50
  Understanding exactly who Jesus is directly impacts how he saves
• 29:54
  us. And how He saves us depends
• 29:57
  entirely on what we believe about the spiritual condition of
• 30:00
  humanity in the first place. If mankind is only slightly sick
• 30:04
  with a moral cold, they just need a good doctor and some
• 30:07
  medicine. But if mankind is spiritually
• 30:09
  dead at the bottom of the ocean, they need a resurrection.
• 30:13
  This brings us to the great battle over anthropology, the
• 30:16
  study of human nature, sin and grace.
• 30:19
  The two main figures in this battle could not have been more
• 30:22
  completely different in their personal lives.
• 30:24
  On one side you have Pelagius. He was a British monk who
• 30:27
  traveled to Rome. He lived a quiet, ascetic,
• 30:30
  highly disciplined life. Pelagius looked at the world,
• 30:33
  saw Christians using grace as an excuse for lazy, immoral living,
• 30:37
  and formulated A theology based heavily on human ability and
• 30:41
  moral effort. He taught that humans are born
• 30:43
  entirely neutral. He flatly denied the concept of
• 30:46
  original sin inherited from Adam.
• 30:48
  Ladies argue that Adam's sin only affected Adam.
• 30:51
  It was a bad example, but it didn't corrupt human nature.
• 30:54
  Because God creates every single soul individually at birth, each
• 30:58
  person starts with a completely blank slate, fully free and
• 31:01
  entirely capable of choosing good or evil.
• 31:03
  In Pelagius mind, living a completely sinless life is
• 31:08
  entirely possible through sheer human willpower.
• 31:11
  He believed you possessed the natural equipment to obey God
• 31:14
  perfectly right now. To be honest, Pelagius sounds
• 31:17
  incredibly reasonable to a modern era.
• 31:19
  It feels fair. Yeah, it appeals to our sense of
• 31:21
  justice. If God is going to judge me for
• 31:24
  my sins, it only makes sense that I was actually capable of
• 31:26
  choosing not to sin in the first place.
• 31:28
  Pelagius views humanity as a person standing at a completely
• 31:32
  flat, neutral crossroads, possessing equal internal
• 31:35
  ability to walk down the path of righteousness or the path of
• 31:38
  evil. The choice is entirely up to
• 31:41
  their unaided free will. But here's the massive push
• 31:43
  back. If everyone is born totally
• 31:46
  neutral with a blank slate, how did Pelagius explain the fact
• 31:48
  that literally everyone sins? He blamed it on society and
• 31:51
  environment. Plagius said universal
• 31:53
  sinfulness is just a result of wrong education or bad examples.
• 31:57
  People sin because they grow up seeing other people sinning and
• 32:00
  they just copy the habit. Therefore, God's grace, like the
• 32:03
  law or the example of Jesus, might be a helpful bonus to
• 32:07
  overcome those bad societal habits.
• 32:10
  But internal grace is completely unnecessary for salvation.
• 32:13
  Man can save himself by just choosing to obey God's commands.
• 32:17
  If sin is just a learned behavior from bad examples, how
• 32:21
  did Pelagius explain why every single human being in every
• 32:24
  single culture, across all of time, isolated or not, without
• 32:27
  exception, learns the exact same bad behavior?
• 32:30
  It's a huge logic gap. If a coin is truly weighted
• 32:33
  equally on both sides and you flip it 100 billion times, it is
• 32:36
  mathematically impossible for it to land on tails every single
• 32:39
  time. To spot on.
• 32:40
  And the man who exposed that logical and biblical failure was
• 32:44
  Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo. Augustine's background was the
• 32:47
  polar opposite of the disciplined monk Pelagius.
• 32:49
  Augustine lived a wild, restless, immoral life before
• 32:52
  his conversion. He famously recounts in his
• 32:55
  confessions stealing pears from a tree, not because he was
• 32:58
  hungry, but simply because he loved the thrill of doing evil.
• 33:01
  He tried philosophy and tried the Manichaean religion.
• 33:04
  He tried hedonism to find peace and he failed miserably.
• 33:07
  He experienced first hand the crushing, unbreakable power of
• 33:11
  his own sinful desires. When he was finally converted,
• 33:15
  reading Romans 13.14 in a garden in Milan, he knew beyond a
• 33:19
  shadow of a doubt that he had not saved himself.
• 33:22
  He was utterly rescued. Augustine looked at Scripture
• 33:25
  and articulated the doctrine of total depravity.
• 33:28
  He taught that humanity's original state of perfection in
• 33:31
  the Garden of Eden was completely lost in the fall.
• 33:34
  Humans didn't just stumble, they shattered, Augustine said.
• 33:37
  Mankind is now non posse, non Peck hair, which is Latin for
• 33:41
  not able not to sin. We are bound by our own corrupt
• 33:45
  desires. Augustine taught the concept of
• 33:47
  original sin and imputation. He argued from Romans 5 that all
• 33:51
  of humanity was Seminole present in Adam.
• 33:54
  When Adam, as the federal head of the human race, rebelled
• 33:56
  against God, the entire human race fell with him.
• 33:59
  We are not born neutral, we are born guilty, and our wills are
• 34:02
  entirely enslaved to our sinful nature.
• 34:04
  Going back to the crossroads, Augustine says we are not
• 34:06
  standing at a neutral intersection.
• 34:08
  We are born with a broken internal compass that only ever
• 34:11
  points towards self love, pride and rebellion.
• 34:14
  We will always freely choose what we desire most, and what we
• 34:17
  desire most by nature is never God.
• 34:20
  We are utterly incapable of choosing God on our own.
• 34:23
  Therefore, God's grace is not just a helpful boost or a good
• 34:26
  example. It is an absolute necessity.
• 34:29
  Augustine called it irresistible grace.
• 34:32
  A sovereign grace that actually changes the human heart,
• 34:36
  replacing the heart of stone with a heart of flesh, so that a
• 34:39
  person voluntarily and joyfully chooses God.
• 34:42
  He argued vehemently that even the faith required to believe
• 34:45
  the gospel is a gift from God, not a product of human effort.
• 34:49
  Both of us, operating from a Reformed theological
• 34:51
  perspective, recognize that Augustine's precise articulation
• 34:54
  during this conflict forms the historical bedrock for the
• 34:57
  Westminster Confessions view of human depravity and sovereign
• 35:00
  grace. Pelagianism was rightly
• 35:02
  recognized as a deadly error that makes man his own savior.
• 35:05
  It was condemned at the synods of Carthage and Malev and
• 35:08
  officially condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD.
• 35:12
  The sources show a distinct shift here, however.
• 35:15
  While the council's condemned Pelagius, the Church didn't
• 35:18
  entirely stick to Augustine's pure view of grace and practice.
• 35:21
  A compromise called Semi Pelagianism crept into the
• 35:24
  mainstream. It suggested man's will was
• 35:27
  severely weakened by the fall, but not totally dead, and that
• 35:30
  salvation is a cooperative effort.
• 35:33
  God initiates the grace, but man must cooperate with his own free
• 35:37
  will. This theological compromise
• 35:40
  formed the historical background for the Roman Catholic system of
• 35:43
  salvation. Which logically moves us into
• 35:45
  soteriology and ecclesiology, the doctrines of salvation in
• 35:48
  the Church. Because Augustine and Pelagius
• 35:51
  clashed so intensely over how grace is applied to the soul
• 35:55
  internally, we have to look at how the early Church practically
• 35:58
  applied salvation through their physical rituals and weekly
• 36:00
  gatherings. If you believe humans are dead
• 36:02
  in sin, how does that life giving grace actually reach the
• 36:06
  person sitting in the Pew? When we look at early views on
• 36:09
  the atonement, how Christ's death actually pays for sin,
• 36:13
  things are surprisingly underdeveloped in the 1st 2
• 36:15
  centuries. The Apostolic Fathers believed
• 36:17
  in a substitutionary death, but they didn't write massive
• 36:20
  theological treatises on the mechanics of it.
• 36:23
  Clement of Rome implied a sort of unlimited atonement that won
• 36:27
  the grace of repentance for everyone.
• 36:30
  Athanasius focused heavily on Christ's death, satisfying the
• 36:34
  truth of God fulfilling the penalty of death promised in
• 36:37
  Genesis. Augustine focused on the cross,
• 36:39
  assuaging the holy wrath of God. But alongside these developing
• 36:42
  views of the Cross, the sources reveal a shift toward reliance
• 36:46
  on human works and merit. Clement started stressing
• 36:50
  Rahab's hospitality and her general obedience as part of her
• 36:53
  salvation, not just her faith. Over time, the church began
• 36:58
  viewing salvation less as a finished, accomplished work of
• 37:01
  Christ and more as a cooperative, lifelong path of
• 37:04
  keeping the flesh pure and practicing rigorous
• 37:07
  righteousness. A.
• 37:08
  Belief even developed that the intense physical suffering of
• 37:11
  Christian martyrs could actually atone for the sins of others in
• 37:13
  the community. According to the text, what
• 37:16
  started as Paul's teaching on grace began to evolve.
• 37:19
  We see the development of physical mechanisms to deliver
• 37:21
  this grace. The sacraments became the
• 37:23
  primary vehicles. Take baptism for example.
• 37:26
  The D Dock, which is a very early church manual, required
• 37:28
  strict fasting before baptism. Justin Martyr taught that
• 37:32
  invoking the name of the Trinity over the water actually resulted
• 37:35
  in the remission of sins. And Augustine himself, despite
• 37:39
  his robust views on internal grace, taught that the physical
• 37:43
  act of baptism literally washed away original sin.
• 37:46
  This specific belief is what fueled the massive universal
• 37:50
  push for infant baptism in the following centuries to ensure
• 37:54
  babies were cleansed of original sin as quickly as possible.
• 37:58
  From a historical perspective, this creates a massive practical
• 38:01
  problem. If baptism physically washes
• 38:03
  away your past sins, what happens if you commit a serious
• 38:06
  sin the day after you are baptized?
• 38:08
  It created a culture of intense spiritual anxiety.
• 38:12
  Many believe that certain major sins committed after baptism
• 38:15
  were unforgivable or at least required years of severe public
• 38:19
  penance to rectify. So people started gaming the
• 38:21
  system. If you're terrified of sinning
• 38:23
  after baptism, you're going to delay your baptism as long as
• 38:26
  physically possible. The Roman emperor Constantine,
• 38:28
  who legalized Christianity, famously waited until he was
• 38:31
  literally on his deathbed to be baptized just to ensure he
• 38:35
  didn't accidentally commit a fatal sin afterward and ruin his
• 38:37
  salvation. It shows a misunderstanding of
• 38:40
  the ongoing cleansing power of Christ's It's blood that we see
• 38:43
  in John's epistles. We see a very similar evolution
• 38:46
  with the Lord's Supper. Ignatius, writing very early on,
• 38:50
  called the Communion elements the Medicine of Immortality.
• 38:54
  What started in the New Testament as an agape love feast
• 38:57
  and a simple Thanksgiving meal, the Eucharist began to change in
• 39:01
  its fundamental nature. Justin Martyr suggested a
• 39:04
  physical alteration of the bread and wine, teaching that the food
• 39:07
  nourishes the believer by a mystical transformation into the
• 39:10
  actual flesh and blood of Jesus. Those early statements planted
• 39:14
  the theological seeds for what would eventually become the
• 39:17
  Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.
• 39:20
  The table of remembrance, where believers look back at the
• 39:23
  finished work of the cross, slowly evolved into an altar of
• 39:26
  sacrifice, where a priest supposedly reoffered the body
• 39:29
  and blood of Christ to God continually.
• 39:31
  Despite this growing focus on ritual, the early Christians
• 39:34
  were highly focused on how to live purely in the present
• 39:37
  moment, and a major reason for their intense moral focus was
• 39:41
  what they believed about the very near future.
• 39:44
  Let us shift our focus to eschatology, the study of the
• 39:47
  end of the age and the return of Christ.
• 39:49
  The earliest eschatological views in the church were
• 39:52
  vividly, undeniably premillennial.
• 39:55
  They believe Jesus was returning soon to establish a literal,
• 39:59
  physical, visible Kingdom on earth for 1000 years.
• 40:02
  Papias, an early Bishop writing around 130 to 140 AD, described
• 40:07
  this coming earthly Kingdom in hyper abundant, almost comical
• 40:10
  terms. Papias descriptions are
• 40:12
  legendary. He wrote about a restored
• 40:14
  physical Earth where a single Grapevine would have 10,000
• 40:18
  shoots. Each shoot would have 10,000
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  branches, each branch 10,000 twigs, each twig 10,000
• 40:24
  clusters, and each clusters under 10,000 grapes.
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  He claimed grass and wheat would grow in similar massive
• 40:29
  proportions and all the wild carnivorous animals would become
• 40:32
  peaceable, eating only vegetation and become entirely
• 40:36
  obedient to humanity. It sounds like a science fiction
• 40:38
  utopia. Irenaeus also defended A literal
• 40:41
  material Kingdom on Earth, but his arguments were far more
• 40:44
  sophisticated and biblically grounded than Pypius's giant
• 40:47
  grapes. Irenaeus grounded his
• 40:48
  premillennialism in the unconditional Abrahamic covenant
• 40:52
  from Genesis, arguing that God promised Abraham physical land
• 40:56
  and God must fulfill that promise.
• 40:58
  He also pointed to the prophecies of Isaiah 11.
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  Irenaeus argued that the righteous would literally rise
• 41:03
  from the dead to inherit a physically renewed creation,
• 41:07
  completely free from the bondage of sin and decay.
• 41:10
  But that literal physical expectation did not hold its
• 41:12
  ground. The church experienced a massive
• 41:15
  systemic shift toward a millennialism.
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  Which is the belief that there is no literal thousand year
• 41:21
  earthly reign of Christ in the future, but rather a spiritual
• 41:24
  Kingdom happening right now in the Church age.
• 41:27
  This shift began in Alexandria, Egypt, a city famous for its
• 41:31
  libraries and philosophy. It was heavily influenced by the
• 41:34
  allegorical interpretation methods of theologians like
• 41:37
  Clement and Origen. Interpretative methods
• 41:39
  completely dictate theological conclusions.
• 41:42
  When you shift from a literal reading of Old Testament
• 41:44
  prophecy, like Irenaeus did, to a highly allegorical reading
• 41:48
  like Origen, did you fundamentally change what the
• 41:50
  Church expects to happen? Origen believed the literal
• 41:53
  meaning of Scripture was just the basic introductory shell.
• 41:57
  He wanted to find the hidden spiritual, philosophical meaning
• 42:01
  behind every voice. He didn't just allegorize the
• 42:04
  Millennium, he allegorized almost everything.
• 42:06
  He even suggested at one point that eventually all creatures,
• 42:09
  including fallen angels and demons, would be saved through
• 42:13
  educative punishment in the afterlife.
• 42:15
  Augustine initially held to a literal premillennial view, but
• 42:19
  he eventually adopted amillennialism fully.
• 42:21
  He popularized the view that the current age is the Millennium,
• 42:26
  the ongoing spiritual conflict between the city of God, which
• 42:29
  is the church, and the city of man, which is the secular world.
• 42:33
  But looking at Augustine's writings, we have to ask did his
• 42:36
  rejection of a literal Millennium stem from actual
• 42:39
  rigorous biblical exegesis of Revelation 20, or was it
• 42:43
  influenced by a philosophical distaste for physical things?
• 42:46
  The historical evidence heavily suggests the latter.
• 42:48
  Augustine himself admitted in his writings that he grew deeply
• 42:51
  uncomfortable with the highly carnal and material expectations
• 42:54
  of the Millennialists. Before he was a Christian,
• 42:57
  Augustine was heavily influenced by Neoplatonic philosophy.
• 43:01
  Much like Gnosticism, Neoplatonism viewed the
• 43:04
  spiritual immaterial realm as vastly superior and purer than
• 43:09
  the physical realm. That philosophical background
• 43:11
  made it incredibly hard for him to stomach the idea of a perfect
• 43:14
  Kingdom characterized by abundant food, wine, having
• 43:17
  children and physical enjoyment. A spiritual Kingdom just felt
• 43:22
  more holy to him, so he spiritualized the Old Testament
• 43:25
  promises to make them fit his philosophical comfort zone.
• 43:29
  That is a staggering historical realization.
• 43:31
  One man's philosophical discomfort with physical
• 43:34
  pleasure helped shift the eschatological viewpoint of the
• 43:37
  entire Western Church for well over 1000 years.
• 43:40
  His allegorical view became the absolute dominant position of
• 43:43
  the Church until the Reformation and beyond.
• 43:45
  As we pull all of this together, we have covered an immense
• 43:48
  amount of historical and theological ground.
• 43:50
  We really have. We watched the apologists use
• 43:52
  Greek logic to defend the faith against Roman pagans.
• 43:56
  We saw the church fight off bizarre Gnostic hierarchies and
• 43:59
  throw out Marcian's edited, chopped up Bible.
• 44:02
  We watched Athanasius endure exile to define the exact
• 44:05
  eternal nature of the Trinity at Nicaea.
• 44:08
  And we saw the Council of Chalcedon clarify how Jesus can
• 44:11
  be fully God and fully man without turning into a smoothie.
• 44:16
  We examined Agustin battling Pelagius over the total
• 44:19
  depravity of the human heart. And we tracked how the early
• 44:22
  Church's practical fear of sin altered their sacraments and
• 44:25
  their hope for the future. This brings it all back directly
• 44:28
  to you, the listener. Every time you read a modern
• 44:30
  doctrinal statement on a church website, or recite a Cree on a
• 44:33
  Sunday morning, or read the Westminster Confession, you
• 44:36
  aren't just reading a list of sterile academic bullet points
• 44:39
  drafted in a vacuum. You are looking at the scars,
• 44:42
  the blood and the hard won victories of these early
• 44:44
  theological battles. Men who were banished, exiled,
• 44:47
  mocked, and martyred so that we could inherit a clear Orthodox
• 44:51
  understanding of who God is, how broken our nature is, and
• 44:54
  exactly how His grace saves us. I want to leave you with a final
• 44:57
  thought to Mull over. Building on the history we just
• 45:00
  discussed, we talked extensively about Marcion, the wealthy
• 45:03
  shipowner who tried to hack the Bible down to a tiny fraction of
• 45:06
  its size. Yeah, his teaching was a
• 45:08
  terrible, destructive heresy that threatened to sever
• 45:11
  Christianity from its historical roots.
• 45:13
  However, if Marcion hadn't aggressively used his massive
• 45:16
  wealth to promote his own edited, scaled down Bible, how
• 45:20
  long would it have taken the early church leaders to get
• 45:22
  around to officially codifying the New Testament?
• 45:25
  That's a great question. We like to think of church
• 45:28
  history as a peaceful, organized progression, but sometimes the
• 45:32
  greatest catalyst for establishing the undeniable
• 45:34
  truth is a direct, well funded confrontation with a massive
• 45:38
  error. God providentially used a
• 45:40
  heretic scissors to force the Orthodox Church to bind the true
• 45:44
  Canon together forever. A fascinating reality of how
• 45:47
  Providence operates through the chaos of human history, using
• 45:50
  even the worst errors to sharpen the truth.
• 45:53
  Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into reformed
• 45:56
  thinking. Keep reading, keep questioning,
• 45:58
  and keep resting in the grace that was so fiercely defended
• 46:02
  all those centuries ago.