Day 66: True God and True Man (464-469)

• It is Day 66!!

• Yesterday we talked about…

• WHY?

• Why did the Son of God become man? 

• Why did the Word become flesh?

• And we answered that question by saying 

• HE CAME TO SAVE US BY RECONCILING US TO THE FATHER

• Remember, that was the FIRST reason

• SECONDLY

• THAT WE MIGHT KNOW GOD’S LOVE

• THIRD

• TO BE OUR MODEL OF HOLINESS

• FOURTH

• SO WE COULD BECOME PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE

• Remarkable, right?

• Well, today, the Church

• Gosh, it’s one thing to say

• Jesus Christ is truly God. 

• Jesus Christ is Lord.

• We talked about that a couple of days ago

• But then the question comes up

• WELL WHAT DO YOU MEAN?

• What do you mean that Jesus Christ is true God and true man?

• And so what happens Is we’re going to look at today

• The HERESIES

• The challenges to the understanding of who Jesus TRULY IS

• We know Jesus is the SecondPperson of the Trinity, become flesh

• BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

• What does it mean to say that Jesus is true God and true man? 

• What does it mean to say He's both Divine and human?

• We’re going to look at a couple of different heresies 

• We’re going to look at the fact that the first heresies that popped up actually more denied Christs’ humanity than they denied Christ’s Divinity

• The first thing was He only APPEARED to be human

• He DIDN’T BECOME human

• We’re also going to look at the NESTORIAN heresy 

• The Nestorian Heresy regarded Jesus Christ as a HUMAN person JOINED to the DIVINE Person of God's Son

• We have to clarify that

• NO!!

• JESUS IS ONE DIVINE PERSON WITH A HUMAN NATURE AND A DIVINE NATURE 

• He's ONE Divine person with TWO natures-Human and Divine 

• That’s going to be very very important

• That was the Council of Ephesus that talked about that

• It was also the Council of Ephesus that proclaimed that Mary is truly the Theotokos

• SHE IS TRULY THE MOTHER OF GOD

• Because the Person, the Being, the ONE who was conceived in her womb was TRULY the Son of God 

• Was from the moment of his conception had already ETERNALLY BEEN the Son of God who became man at one point in time

• IT IS INCREDIBLE!!

• This Divine person JOINED his Divine nature to human nature.

• WHICH IS REMARKABLE!!

• The Monophysites affirmed that when the second person of the Trinity, the Only Begotten Son of the Father, joined his DIVINE NATURE TO HIS HUMAN NATURE, that the human nature had CEASED TO EXIST

• And so that’s why, in 451 the Council of Chalcedon confessed that His HUMAN NATURE and that DIVINE NATURE CO-EXISTED essentially IN ONE DIVINE PERSON, IN ONE HYPOSTASIS

• That's the technical term here

• IT IS REMARKABLE!!

• But these are some of the heresies that came up and asked the question

• What is it to say that Jesus is Lord?

• What is it to say that Jesus is the Son of God?

• It is our misunderstanding of some of these heresies and the Church's subsequent clarification of this 

• Since we have lacked a degree of CLARITY in the way we've articulated how Jesus Christ is TRULY God and TRULY man, there are a number of Muslim apologists who kinda twist the Catholic teaching about who Jesus TRULY is in order to deny His Divinity

• For us, we want to understand who Jesus REALLY is so we can love him

• So we can know the TRUTH

• And we can love him in truth 

• But also, so that we can EXPLAIN not just to our Muslim friends but to any friend

• To be able to say when they ask us, "What do you mean that Jesus Christ is true God and true man?”

• “What do you mean that He is both human and Divine?”

• To be able to say at least in some ways 

• “We're not saying this or or we’re not saying that. But We ARE saying this other thing."

• That’s what we’re kind of looking at today

• There might be some new words that you have never heard of before

• Like Gnosticism or Gnostic Docetism 

• That’s one of the first heresies we're going to talk about 

• The name Nestorian comes from a guy named Nestorius

• It just happens to be his name

• So they named the heresy after Nestorius

• If you become influential enough in your heresy, then you get to have a heresy named after you

• Like the Arian heresy, named after Arius

• BUT…

• What we’re looking for is the ability not only to know who God is so we can love him, but also to be able to explain

• It might be some kind of words that you might not have heard

• Gnostic Docetism, Nestorianism, Homoousios

• You’re going to get the context as we move along

• Do not be distracted or sidetracked by some words that might not be immediately apparently understandable

• But know that we’re going to give some context ultimately

• OK, so here we go

• Let’s get started

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, we know that you've given us your Only Begotten Son. We know that, in Jesus Christ, one Divine person, there were two natures, Human and Divine. In so many ways, we don't know how the details, in so many ways, we don't know exactly what that means. Father, we ask you to help us to understand how your Eternal Only Begotten Son entered into time and entered into our world, into this life in a unique way in the Incarnation. Help us to understand it just more deeply today so that we can love you and rejoice and give you praise and glory for what you have done in our lives and in the life of every human being. By uniting your Divinity to our humanity, you have forever changed our humanity. And we thank you. Help us to live like this. This day and every day, we make this prayer in Jesus' name. Amen”

• IT IS INCREDIBLE!!

• One of the reasons why we have Church Councils is because there are challenges

• There are misunderstandings

• There are teachings that are contrary to the faith

• And so the Church has to answer and has to say

• OK WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

• WHAT IS IT THAT WE ACTUALLY BELIEVE?

• WHAT IS IT THAT WE ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT JESUS?

• WHAT IS IT THAT WE ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT ANY MYSTERIES OF OUR FAITH?

• From the very, very beginning the first heresies denied not so much Christ's Divinity as His true humanity

• For gnostics it was the material world that was evil, it was fallen

• And it was what we needed to shake off

• And so they would say that, "No it would be improper to Divinity to actually take on humanity, to actually get hungry, to actually digest, to actually sleep…”

• AND NOT ONLY THAT…

• To suffer and to die, that was so abhorrent to them that they denied Christ's humanity in the first place

• AND YET…

• From apostolic times, from  the very beginning, the Christian faith has INSISTED the true incarnation of Jesus Christ come in the flesh

• THAT IS SO IMPORTANT!!

• There’s also the other heresy in the third century

• Paragraph 465 says, “The Church in a Council of Antioch had to affirm against Paul of Samosata that Jesus Christ is Son of God by nature and not by adoption…” 

• Because Paul of Samosata was saying that he was the Son of God BUT ONLY BY ADOPTION

• Meaning here is the Gospel story that talks about how Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River

• The Holy Spirit comes upon him

• And the Father declares "This is my Son." 

• And so Paul of Samosata would claim that “Well, that's when the Father ADOPTED Jesus. If He had Divinity, that's when it came upon him."

• And the Church is like, “NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT!!”

• Very, very important to recognize that Jesus is the Son of God by nature, NOT BY ADOPTION

• WE are sons and daughters of God BY ADOPTION

• Jesus Christ is UNIQUE

• He is the Son of God by NATURE 

• ALWAYS, ALWAYS the Son of God.

• Next we have the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea

• You know what year that was

• That was 325 AD

• It’s one of those years that people just remember

• Put that in the old brain bucket

• There was a guy named Arius

• And the Arian Heresy was MASSIVELY, MASSIVELY popular

• And so the Church had to speak out against the Arian heresy

• And what happened?

• The Council of Nicaea

• In what Year?

• 325 AD

• That’s right!

• It said that “NO, the Son of God is BEGOTTEN, not MADE

• CONSUBSTANTIAL with the Father…”

• We say that EVERY SINGLE SUNDAY

• Consubstantial

• That Greek word is Homoousios

• OF THE SAME SUBSTANCE

• Arius had said that the Son of God came to be from things that were not

• There was a time when the Son of God DID NOT EXIST

• And very very important in the Council of Nicaea that we clarified and affirmed JESUS CHRIST IS ETERNALLY BEGOTTEN OF THE FATHER, OF THE SAME SUBSTANCE, CONSUBSTANTIAL WITH THE FATHER

• So whenever you say that, this Sunday coming up

• Realize we say that because there was the heresy that DENIED the fact that Jesus is true God and true man

• After this, we have the Nestorian Heresy

• BUT…

• All these things, they kind of swirl a little bit too

• Sometimes they happen chronologically

• And sometimes they happen concurrently

• The Nestorian Heresy regarded Christ as a human person, joined to the Divine person of God's Son

• And so the Council of Ephesus in year 431 AD 

• Had to declare that JESUS IS A DIVINE PERSON WITH TWO NATURES

• A nature that is HUMAN and a nature that is DIVINE

• He has Divine nature and human nature

• BUT… 

• HE’S ONE DIVINE PERSON

• Paragraph 466 says, “...The third ecumenical council of Ephesus in 431 confessed ‘that the Word, uniting himself in his person the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man. Christ’s humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it his own, from his conception. For this reason the Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God by the human conception of the Son of God in her Womb…”

• Mary is the THEOTOKOS

• So, obviously, Mary did not exist before the Son of God existed

• He is eternal

• He is the ONLY BEGOTTEN SON OF THE FATHER

• He is before all things

• He is the WORD ETERNAL

• Mary was born IN TIME

• Mary is a HUMAN BEING

• AND YET…

• Here's what the Council of Ephesus said

• What year?

• 431

• Got that

• Good

• Well done!

• “Mary is Mother of God, not that the nature of the Word or his Divinity received the beginning of his existence from the Holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis was born from her, the WWord is said to be born according to the flesh.”

• Right?

• THAT IS THE VERY IMPORTANT PART!!

• That’s THE HUMAN NATURE

• The Holy Body animated by rational soul which the Word of God united to himself, according to the hypostasis was born from her 

• The Word is SAID to be born according to the flesh

• THIS IS SO SO IMPORTANT!!

• We call Mary the Mother of God NOT because it’s not meant to be simply a TITLE of honor to her

• Although, what an incredible honor

• BUT… 

• It's saying something about JESUS

• It is saying, that from the very moment of his conception, the Eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, UNITED TO HIMSELF HUMANITY, so that the being in Mary's womb is the second Person of the Trinity

• That one Person, one Divine Person, with a human and Divine nature

• THEREFORE THE CHILD TO WHOM MARY GAVE BIRTH IS ACTUALLY GOD!! 🤯 🤯 🤯

• THEREFORE…

• MARY IS THE MOTHER OF GOD!!

• Does that make sense?

• Now again, not that she PRECEDED the Eternal Son of the Father

• But that she TRULY gave birth to a DIVINE PERSON

• Therefore, she is the Mother of God when she gave birth to Jesus Christ - a Divine Person, with a human and Divine nature 

• It's not about Mary

• What it is about is here’s how FULLY Jesus has united HIS DIVINITY to OUR HUMANITY

• And so we have the Monophysite Heresy in Paragraph 467, “The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine person of God’s Son assumed it.” 

• Yeah, at some point here’s God's Divinity, the second person of the Trinity, who became one of us

• So there's human nature at the beginning

• But then it was kind of like this

• This humanity that Christ assumed GETS LOST IN THIS SEA OF DIVINITY

• And the example was like Alka-Seltzer

• Here’s a tablet of Alka-Seltzer

• That would be the humanity that gets dropped into this sea of divinity

• And it just kind of DISSOLVES

• It just goes away

• And the problem with this

• Because that would say, “Yeah, there's’ the incarnation. God became one of us!”

• But then the HUMANITY PART just dissolved away

• The problem with that is that it means that Jesus DID NOT ACT AS A HUMAN BEING

• That His life, His miracles, His suffering, His death, His rising from the dead weren't done as a human being but simply were done as a Divine being

• GOD DID THIS!!

• Even the whole purpose of the Incarnation is to bring God close to us and us close to Divinity

• If He absorbed and essentially obliterated our humanity, then that doesn't come close to us

• The Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in Paragraph 467 says, “Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity.”

• THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!

• The humanity of Jesus DID NOT CEASE TO EXIST

• It did not get obliterated like a Alka-Seltzer in water

• THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!

• Paragraph 467 continues, “He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God.”

• And so goes on

• It hammers it home…

• Paragraph 467 in the small script, “We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis.”

• THIS IS JUST REMARKABLE!!

• INCREDIBLE!!

• MAN!!

• Jesus being one Divine person having a Divine nature and a Human nature is not just technical 

• It’s not just kind of “we like to know the nuts and bolts or how the engine works, or whatever you want to say and ‘whatever is under the hood”

• Because it actually matters to us

• It MATTERS that Jesus is fully God 

• Because if He wasn't fully God, we couldn't be redeemed

• It also matters that Jesus is fully human because if he wasn't fully human WE couldn't be redeemed

• And so here is Jesus who, in one Divine Person, has a human nature just like ours, in all things but sin, He became like us

• IN ALL THINGS BUT SIN

• BUT…

• Also has a Divine nature

• WHICH IS JUST REMARKABLE AND INCREDIBLE!!

• The Roman liturgy says in Paragraph 469, “What He was, He remained. And what he was not, he assumed.”

• That he wan’t human but he assumed humanity

• What he was, he remained, Divine

• And what he was not, he assumed, human

• And the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, who, just remarkable, golden tongue

• IT IS DEEP!!

• Paragraph 469 continues, “O only-begotten son and Word of God, immortal being, you who deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy Mother of God and ever-Virgin Mary, you who without change became man and were crucified, O Christ our God, you who by your death have crushed death, you who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us!”

• IT IS INCREDIBLE!!

• This is exceptionally long today, but this is deep

• Don’t be discouraged if you’re like “WHAT?”

• “I still don’t know who Nestorian or Nestorius is”

• “I don’t know the Arian heresy yet”

• It’s ok

• What we need to know is JESUS IS ONE DIVINE PERSON WITH A HUMAN NATURE AND A DIVINE NATURE

• Again, as it says very clearly

• Without confusion, change, division, or separation

• And that means God has made himself our BROTHER

• So that we could become SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF GOD

• IT IS INCREDIBLE!!

• Tomorrow we’re going to talk about HOW IS THE SON OF GOD MAN? 

• IT IS REMARKABLE!!

• IT IS INCREDIBLE!!

• It might, in some ways, be CHALLENGING

• BUT…

• Hang in there

• This is worth it

• It is worth doing the work because we NEED to know who Jesus is

• We NEED to know what is the meaning of the Incarnation and how does it affect our lives

• Fr. Mike is praying for you that you made it through today

• Keep pressing play tomorrow

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT to see you tomorrow!!