Christology Overview

[Brother Adam]

Not quite sure where to put this, but these are my review notes (shortened) from the second half of my semester. It gives a good overview of the history of the Christological Debate after Arianism. It's a bit rough, but if someone wanted to quickly pick up some Christology at a university level, this would probably do it.



1. The Nicene Creed (in actuality the Constantinoplain Creed, because it completes it), makes 4 main distinctions between the heresy of Arius and orthodox Christology. Jesus is:
a. From the ousia, or substance of the Father
b. As true God from true God
c. Begotten not made
d. Homousia with the Father

2. The single most important reason why Nicea was not accepted in the East is that because there was a modalist who signed it – Marcellus of Ancyia. Nicea did not work out a theological system against Modalism, against Marcellus, which was also one of Arius’ greatest fears (that to teach the eternal generation of the Son was to be a modalist). That same fear was shared by everyone in the East. They feared the mistake of Marcellus, so when he signs Nicea and is not condemned, they have issues with the Nicene Creed and refuse to accept it.

3. It also created new questions, causing it to be difficult to accept. It did not address the hypostasis controversy, the problem of how to understand the persons of the Trinity. The Capadocian Fathers principally addressed these problems.

4. Eusebius of Caesarea was brilliant, but wrong on just about everything. His foundation was in Origin and he gives us the Creed of Caesarea.
a. He signs Nicea in bad faith.
b. Homoousius gave him a lot of trouble and he often repeats that he signed unto the creed only by understanding that word in a particular way. He is concerned about thinking of God in a materialist way and has trouble with nearly every addition Nicea makes. He states that Jesus is homousius only if he remains distinct from the Father.
c. He finds Arius’ ex nihilo teaching obnoxious. The words “begotten not made” give him trouble though. His idea of from the substance are only that he is from the Father, but not from nothing.
d. He states that the Son of God predates the incarnation, but still believes there was a time when the Son was not. This is not what the council Fathers meant by using the word begotten. Rather Eusebius interprets the council fathers as talking about generation in the flesh. Eusebius does not like the doctrine of the eternal generation from the son, and will not say the Son is eternally generated.
e. Origin would have accepted eternal generation, because he believed that the Father begot the son to create the world. It is the concept of Economic Trinitarianism – the Trinity is only a function and relation of the created world. God rather is always Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whether there is a creation or not.
f. Origin taught the everlasting generation of the son, he taught therefore an everlasting world. Eusebius denies the everlasting generation of the son, because the world has a beginning for him. Matter is a remedial punishment. Eusebius dies not believing in the teachings of Origin.
g. God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit without reference to the created world. God we would say against Eusebius is not a monad. He is not this lonely solitary figure. He is a communion of persons. The incarnation is the appearance in the flesh of god himself, the Almighty. The created order in Christ is united to the Almighty God. In the thought of Eusebius and Arius this is not so. For Origin and Eusebius the body doesn’t fair well. For Origin flesh is good, but it is extrinsic to what really matters. Eusebius has virtually no appreciation for the body.

5. Eusebius and the body
a. The body is not bad (incarnation) and is capable of communion with God. It is capable of resurrection without becoming non-bodily.
b. In Eusebius’ system to be made in the image of God Himself it is too good for the created world. Especially for a material being. Christianity is going to have a greater appreciation for human dignity in Nicene theology than in Eusebian theology. Son of God is not really the height of divinity in Eusebius system, only his body dies for you, but not Jesus dying for you.
c. When you reject Eusebius’ metaphysics you have a new appreciation for the incarnation. If the son is eternal and if the Trinity exists apart from creation, than when the son of God is made man, that means we’ve got this closeness we spoke of, we are able to have true communion with God himself.
d. There is one God because the Father alone is unbegotten. There is one God because there is one father. There is no problem with diversity – Son is not one in being. The Son’s distinction is no longer a distinction in being, you have to fin d a way theologically of maintaining one God and only one God, not really three God’s. But one God and only one God and you have to hold against the modalists. The Father is distinct from the Son and Holy Spirit. You have to hold the distinction and unity together at once.

6. Gregory of Nyssa
a. For Gregory of Nyssa the distinct personal traits of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit reveal their unity. He makes the unity a function of distinction. The distinguishing property of the son is that he manifests the Father and is known by the Spirit. Father: Made known by the Son. Spirit: it is in him that the Son and the Father are known. To know about the relationship of the Trinity, is to know about the whole of the Godhead. The Father’s relationship to the son is not a accidentally quality. The relationship is who God is. When you see the Son you see the Father.

7. Apollinaris of Laodicea
a. Apollinaris of Laodicea was on friendly terms with Nyssa but then he made himself a schismatic over a Trinitarian question (he is a heretic). He had a strange teaching that in the incarnation the divine logos replaced a human logos. So he said that Christ had no human rational principle. Eusebius denied the same thing. To deny a human mind in Christ was a traditional theology.
b. The people who were saying that Christ had a human mind were saying that he was a mere man. So it became dangerous to say that Christ had a human mind, you could be saying he is nothing more than a graced man. He was condemned at the council of Constantinople at 381.
c. Apollinaris teaches there is a divine logos united to a human body. Apollinaris wants to deny Christ a rational soul. Why? If Christ has a human mind, and a divine mind, then he must be two subjects. So the only way to keep Christ one was to deny the human mind. He saw either you deny the human or divine mind. Or you say the one squashes the other.
i. Tripartite anthropology
1. Logos (reasoned)
2. Psyche (soul, life principle, all living things have)
3. Sarx (body)
d. communication idiomatum – exchange of characteristics. Apollinaris is applying the human things of Jesus to the divine principle in him. These parts come together in Christ as one nature.
e. Jesus talks about himself as God in John, and he talks about himself as other than the Father. God is 3 persons. That leads to theological difficulties. No philosophical system up to Jesus and after the first couple of centuries could handle plurality in God. It was inconceivable. So we see then, that the revelation of Christ causes a revolution in a way that we think about God.

8. Thought of Apollinaris. He has this idea that if Jesus is the divine mind, he cannot be at the same time humanly rational. This is Apollinaris’ reflective assumption. The assumption is responsible for his heresy. The assumption is that a single hypostasis cannot have two minds. If a thing is one, it cannot have two minds. You cannot find a single created reality that would prove Apollinaris wrong. Most theologians thought that if Jesus has a human mind, then he is not really a son of god incarnate. He is a mere man indwelt by God. He is a really good man, but he is just a man.

9. Theodore of Mopsuestia (heretic)
a. Makes same assumption, if you have two minds you have to hypostasis. The difference is not that key assumption. Apollinaris says that if Christ is two he cannot save, Theodore says if Christ is not two he cannot save.
b. Theodore was translated to Syriac very early on, a couple of his works were found recently. Talks about the one who assumes and the one assumed. Theodore talks about the son of God who assumed and the one who was assumed by him. Apollinaris is talking about one, Theodore is talking about two.
i. Human nature (nature)  Hypostasis (being)  prosopon (outer appearance)
ii. Divine nature (nature)  hypostasis (being)  prosopon (outer appearance)
iii. Incarnation  two hypostasis  one prosopon.
c. Theodore’s Christology poses that Christ has two natures and two hypostasis.
i. 2 natures  one assuming  One prosopon
ii. 2 hypostasis  one assumed  One prosopon
iii. For Theodore, Christ is two persons.
d. “The son of God was born in so long as he was in the one who was born.” Theodore would say that the Son of God was not born. Cyril would. Theodore would not say that the Son of God died.
e. Christ for Apollinaris is Logos with human flesh. Theodore is insistent that Christ is two natures. He is insistent that the human will/mind of Christ, the one assumed be a autonomous free truly acting human being.
f. Theodore makes the same mistake as Apollinaris. Apollinaris says you can’t have an intrinsic union between two minds and still preserve both things. For the most part he is right. Apollinaris’ assumption throughout that Christ is one. He would say that you could have two minds extrinsically unite where one does not become the other. You have though two things not one. (marriage) Theodore says in a certain sense Apollinaris is right, but Jesus is two minds, He is Son of God, and Jesus, they are one prosopon by virtue of this union, but not one subject.
g. Apollinaris and Theodore are right in this regard – you cannot have an intrinsic union of two created realities and still have two realities. The Son is not a creature! What is impossible for two created minds, is not impossible for the divine logos and a human mind precisely because he is divine.

10. Cyril and Nestorius
a. 428 Nestorius is elected patriarch of Constantinople. In one of his sermons he tells the congregation that they should not call Mary Theotokos. Rather, that the is the Christ bearer.
b. “We do not worship a man in conjunction with the logos” (Cyril)
c. Not even death can remove the Son of God from his dead body. His dead body does not suffer corruption. Even in his death he conquers death.
d. Cyril sends a letter to Pope Celestine and uses Latin instead of Greek.
i. Hypostasis – Either substantia, persona, or suppositum.
ii. Prosopon – Either persona or species (appearance).
iii. Cyril is able to identify the error in Nestorius by identifying the terms in Latin. Cyril did not present Nestorius in the best possible light. He presented him in the worst possible light.
iv. Celestine asks Cyril to oversee the retraction of Nestorius. Late 430 Cyril holds a Synod and condemns Nestorius.

11. Christological Disputes – Iconoclasts.
a. We want to understand what it means when he says he is the Son of the Father, when he inaugurates the kingdom, when he says he is the Christ, the Messiah. If you take, collectively the witness of the Gospels, Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God has come in Him, and that you must have personal communion with him in order to be a citizen of this kingdom. In order to be in communion with him, is to be in communion with God. Jesus is the consubstantial image of the Father.
b. God is a communion of persons. There are not three God’s there is one God. If you want to know who God is you look at who Jesus is.
c. Nicea settled the question on what kind of divinity Jesus has. Affirms the HS is the same as the Father and Son is. It says that Apollinaris his mistake is to be rejected (he rejected the human mind of Christ). We reject his thought because Jesus speaks of himself as having a human mind. Jesus saves us by becoming one of us. He overturns death by dying. He gives us life as one of us rising. He overturns human sin by a perfect human love of God.
d. They all make the mistake that there cannot be a union between the word of God, the mind of God, and the human mind

12. Cyril’s letter to the Monks at Egypt
a. Along with Cyril, Athanasius is the great Eastern Father in the Church. He stood up to everyone, Athanasius against the world. He was faithful even when the Pope had capitulated to the Emperor. His reputation was tremendous. He also quotes the creed in full. Nicea is so important because ‘Athanasius’ made it so. He wants to say that Nestorius’ way of reading the scriptures is the wrong way of reading them. If you don’t think of the incarnation like Cyril does than Christ can’t save you. He conquered death by dying and rising. At most you can say this for Nestorius that the son of God conquers death by being with the one who dies and being raised with the one that dies. If that is the way that you are saved, that is theoretically possible, but that is not what the scriptures witness to. You would not know that Jesus is the Son of God incarnate by the resurrection. He says many things. But what really clinched it? The resurrection. It is by the resurrection that you have this insight into Jesus’ identity.

13. Short Timeline
a. 430 – Cyril and Nestorius’ second letters
b. 430 – Cyril and Nestorius write Pope Celestine
c. 430 – November; Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius (key phrase: Son of God is one nature)
d. 431 – Summer Council held, synod deposition of Nestorius, wherein he revealed his Christological errors, called him another Judas and condemned his teaching.
e. John of Antioch – they will be sympathetic with Nestorius. Appalled that the council was held without them. They have their own council and condemn Cyril and depose him. The Emperor accepts the decisions of both councils. Theologically it doesn’t make any sense. He then puts both Cyril and Nestorius under house arrest. At this time under house arrest Cyril writes:
f. 431 – He writes the explanation of the anathemas (the 12 chapters). Nestorius grows weary of the controversy and doesn’t want to be patriarch anymore. At this point Cyril gains favor with emporer, but haven’t made communion with oriental bishops of Antioch. (#5 is revealing and summary; Anathema 5 from 3rd Letter of Cyril – as the one natural son of God)
g. 432 – Cyril’s letter to Acacias. They want communion on these terms. Cyril has to retract his writings and the formula for union will be simply the creed of Nicea. It was commonly thought that Nicea sufficed and you don’t need any other explanation of faith.
h. 433 – Successful union between John of Antioch and Cyril. Cyril writes a letter to John which contains the formula that they agree to (formula of union). Cyril says that my writings interpret it rightly, but Nestorius interprets it wrongly. Para. 7 is important.
i. Cyril has a two nature theology without mentioning two natures.
j. 448 – Ectucles – hard line Cyrilian. Denied that Christ had two natures. Disposed and condemned by Flavian. Did not respect the human aspects of the Son of God.
k. 449 – zepheous. Dioscoius of Alexandria agrees with Cyril. He insisted that Cyril and his one nature language is right. Dioscoius reinstates Ectucles. Refuses to read the Tome of Leo. “The robber synod of Ephesus” Not a council, a robbery.
l. 450 – Theodosius (emporer dies falling off his horse), his sister Pulcheria comes to power and marries Marcion (general), they want a new council. First thing they do is kill Chrysgohius.
m. Nicea finally came to terms with the Son of God in the scriptures. It took time to realize how radical what the Lord is saying that He is the incarnate Word. At Constantinople we realize that Nicea opened the Trinitarian controversy. Added the teaching on the divinity of the Spirit. The Spirit is equal to the Father and the Son.
n. Apollinaris is condemned for teaching that Christ had no human mind, no rational soul.
o. Christ must have a human mind Gregory of Nyssa – what Christ does not assume He does not heal.” The Lord saves fallen humanity by living His divine life in it.
p. 451 – Council of Chalcedon

14. Leo’s Tome – What can a person have learned from the Sacred Pages when he does not even understand the opening phrases of the Creed. You have to have a kyregma, a faith in order to make sense of them. You won’t see Christ in the Old Testament without having faith in Christ. It was hard for the Apostles to see Christ in the Old Testament with a personal knowledge and friendship with Him. See bottom pg 146. The birth in time detracted the divine and eternal birth or added anything to it. God is by nature life itself. His divine nature cannot be conquered by the power of sin. Cannot be lured by the devil into sinning. Monophysites do not confess two natures, but do confess that Jesus retains his human properties. That is the non-technical equivalent of confessing two natures.

15. Text pg 150 important. One of reasons Monophysites could not accept Chalcedon, the tendency to attribute the activities of Jesus to the natures rather than to the one person of the Son of God. Every orthodox theologian has to adopt two nature exegesis. Nestorius is two nature and two person exegesis. Leo is one person, but two natures. “The one whom the devils cunning tempting….”

16. Chalcedon
a. Very important. To be unconfused, unalterable, undivided, inseparable. Not to be mixed, not changed, yet truly united. First example of a definition as opposed to a creed in the Church. End of Classical Christology. The definition of Chalcedon works, which is the beauty of it. This council is the yard stick that measures any theologians Christology.
b. That is what made Chalcedon so difficult for many to accept. So many could not accept the council’s correction of Cyril. These are the Monophysites, and they never reconciled themselves to Chalcedon. If Cyril can be orthodox can teach this, why these people can be so also. They can, just like they did in the joint declarations.
c. Chalcedon (in which you see the Christology of St. Cyril in a slightly tweaked technical language) was not readily accepted by the universal Church because:
i. Some prefer Cyril’s language to Chalcedon language. Rejected distinction between nature and hypostasis.
ii. They did not condemn Theodore because he was dead.
iii. It exonerated Theodoret of Cyrus and Ibas of Edessa (though they were condemned two councils later). They were exonerated because they rejected Nestorius. They however did not accept Cyril. He would not say that the Son of God died on the cross.
iv. Leo’s Tome. The passage where Leo says each form does what is proper to it. That passage caused a lot of trouble because on the surface it sounds like Leo is talking two subject Christology.
d. It is accepted in the west (Chalcedon). The West identified Chalcedon with Leo’s Tome and they will not forsake Leo’s Tome.

17. 553 – Constantinople II – It does what Chalcedon did not do (who did not condemn enough heretics). They condemned Theodore of Mostopia. And parts of Theodoret and Ibas. They insisted that one of the persons of the Trinity died on the cross (The Theopasdite Formula). It was not enough. The schismatics who rejected Chalcedon could not eliminate the other two problems that he had with it.

18. 680-681, at Constantinople III they rejected monoenergism (the teaching that Christ has one energy. Energy is the act that belongs to nature.) and monothelitism (That Christ has only one will).

Cyril Antiochene
Ephesus 431  Chaledon 451 
Const II 553  Cont III 681 (tempered Cyrilianism)

19. There was a schism in the west of over 100 years because of the condemnation of Ibas and Theodoret. Milan looked away from Rome for a while, and the Church in Northern Italy broke away for about 100 years.

20. 681 – Chalcedon is affirmed in East and West, but the emperor’s who called these councils to resolve the schism never succeed. It is never enough to please the Monophysites. They would never be pleased with anything less than a rejection of Chalcedon and Leo’s Tome.

21. Maximus died in 662 and it was his work, his theology that serves as the backdrop for Constantinople III. Maximus is called the Confessor because he had his tongue cut out for teaching what he taught about Christ having two natures.
a. Makes distinctions in kinds of union.
i. Unity of nature – several beings who are united in having the same nature. All man shares in human nature. Common nature, but you have individuals marked out as individuals by hypostatic properties. In the Trinity you can point out the properties that the Son has that the Father does not have. They are not distinguished by any property that belongs to their common nature. The only thing that distinguishes the Father from the Son, is that the Son is begotten and the Father is not.
ii. Unity of beings with different natures. The real insight of Maximus is that what makes a nature your nature is your logos [your form]. Like humanness is a logos. If you lose your logos you lose yourself. If you have two things of different natures and you unite them, they must preserve their own logos. If it doesn’t, then you don’t really have a union of two things. You have transformed one into another. Union of two different natures can better take place at the level of nature. The union of Christ then cannot be a natural union. It cannot be union on the level of natures. If it is, one of them has to be destroyed. Rather, it is a union on the level of hypostasis. Christ is a composite hypostasis. He is made up of parts. He is one thing, one hypostasis, the Son of God who has parts, one of his parts is His divine nature, His divine Logos, one of his parts is his human mind, and a third of his parts is his human body. He also insists that the incarnation cannot be of this worldly union. It is unique. There is no other thing that is like it.

[phatcatholic]

sweet dude, i'll add this to the "tracts by phatmassers"
[url="http://www.phatmass.com/directory/index.php/cat_id/504"]http://www.phatmass.com/directory/index.php/cat_id/504[/url]

you'll appear at the bottom until you have more than one, and then you'll have your own entry at the top

[Laudate_Dominum]

that's phat.. I miss theology..

[Fides_et_Ratio]

who'd you have for Christology?

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' post='974068' date='May 6 2006, 10:33 PM']
who'd you have for Christology?
[/quote]

My favorite teacher at FUS. Hildebrand. (even though I get poor grades, I learn a great deal more than any other class).

[Fides_et_Ratio]

[quote name='Brother Adam' post='974104' date='May 6 2006, 10:30 PM']
My favorite teacher at FUS. Hildebrand. (even though I get poor grades, I learn a great deal more than any other class).
[/quote]
Yes!

Hildebrand is awesome, I agree. He was my fav prof--though I only was privileged to have him once my freshman year. I got my first (and only, praise God) "F" on a paper from him-- for a couple grammatical errors. He wrote on the last page of my paper: "Great paper-- A" then crossed out the A and wrote "comma-splice, p 2--B" then crossed out the B and wrote "comma-splice, p 4--C" then crossed out the C and wrote "fragment, p 4--D" then crossed out the D and wrote "check your citations-- F" and circled the F. I nearly cried. But my next paper was a C, and by the end of the semester my last paper for him was an A and he wrote, "A-- see you could do it. Good job"

He's a tough prof. But he is so awesome. I learned the most in that theology class with him.

[phatcatholic]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' post='974109' date='May 6 2006, 09:38 PM']
Yes!

Hildebrand is awesome, I agree. He was my fav prof--though I only was privileged to have him once my freshman year. I got my first (and only, praise God) "F" on a paper from him-- for a couple grammatical errors. He wrote on the last page of my paper: "Great paper-- A" then crossed out the A and wrote "comma-splice, p 2--B" then crossed out the B and wrote "comma-splice, p 4--C" then crossed out the C and wrote "fragment, p 4--D" then crossed out the D and wrote "check your citations-- F" and circled the F. I nearly cried. But my next paper was a C, and by the end of the semester my last paper for him was an A and he wrote, "A-- see you could do it. Good job"

He's a tough prof. But he is so awesome. I learned the most in that theology class with him.
[/quote]
holy cow, i'm scared now, i'm waiting to get back my 15-pg paper for his Historical Foundations class

[Apotheoun]

Dr. Hildebrand was my favorite professor at Franciscan University as well, and I was happy when he agreed to be the director for my independent study course on St. Gregory Palamas in the fall of 2005.

He wrote his dissertation on St. Basil the Great and his area of expertise is Patristics, so be sure to take a class on the Church Fathers with him if you can.

[shortnun]

I'm going to bookmark this link for when I take Christology next spring.

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Fides_et_Ratio' post='974109' date='May 6 2006, 11:38 PM']
Yes!

Hildebrand is awesome, I agree. He was my fav prof--though I only was privileged to have him once my freshman year. I got my first (and only, praise God) "F" on a paper from him-- for a couple grammatical errors. He wrote on the last page of my paper: "Great paper-- A" then crossed out the A and wrote "comma-splice, p 2--B" then crossed out the B and wrote "comma-splice, p 4--C" then crossed out the C and wrote "fragment, p 4--D" then crossed out the D and wrote "check your citations-- F" and circled the F. I nearly cried. But my next paper was a C, and by the end of the semester my last paper for him was an A and he wrote, "A-- see you could do it. Good job"

He's a tough prof. But he is so awesome. I learned the most in that theology class with him.
[/quote]



Are you kidding. I only had one paper.

Panics.

[Laudate_Dominum]

i wanna take hildebrand some time

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='phatcatholic' post='974127' date='May 6 2006, 10:03 PM']
holy cow, i'm scared now, i'm waiting to get back my 15-pg paper for his Historical Foundations class

[/quote]
If you can make an intelligent paper with good grammar, you're fine.

I got an A on my Sacraments paper for Hildebrand, which discusses the theme of active liturgical participation as prefigured in Mediator Dei, fulfilled in Sacrosanctum Concilium, and advanced in Ecclesia de Eucharistia...you've just got to use good grammar...grammar can screw you over.

[quote name='Brother Adam' post='974186' date='May 6 2006, 11:51 PM']


Are you kidding. I only had one paper.

Panics.
[/quote]

I only had one paper, too...and he said not to bother with a works cited.

[Brother Adam]

That's a good topic. Did he give it to you, or give you any guidelines? Mine was a commentary on the Christological declarations between the Roman Catholic Church and non-Catholic Eastern Churches. I didn't fair quite as well. A-

[Luthien]

[quote name='Brother Adam' post='975687' date='May 8 2006, 09:47 PM']
That's a good topic. Did he give it to you, or give you any guidelines? Mine was a commentary on the Christological declarations between the Roman Catholic Church and non-Catholic Eastern Churches. I didn't fair quite as well. A-
[/quote]


What the heck is wrong with an A-?

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Luthien' post='975818' date='May 9 2006, 12:40 AM']
What the heck is wrong with an A-?
[/quote]

huh?