Speaker 1: All right, welcome to another live stream we do. This
will be technically part two because the previous ones were
a two parter of part one, so this is part two.
We'll be talking tonight about paradigms. I don't know how
far we're going to get into the other ones here,
but KAYI, can you explain where you intend to go
tonight to another live stream? We will be Okay, there's
an echo on your Yes, that.
Speaker 2: Was me, Sorry, I have the stream open. Yeah, So
basically part two I envision it's going to be basically
three series. We're gonna talk look at paradigms. We're going
to look at comptit, hypostasis, and then essence, energy's distinction.
So tonight we're just going to focus on paradigms, why
they're important, how we can use them, and just kind
of look at Saint Cyril in some of his language
and try to understand his paradigm. I've been making some
posts about it, the Oriental crowd and Sam they've been
criticizing paradigm. They basically don't really understand why we use
them and how they can be useful. So hopefully this
is going to clear up a lot of stuff for
a lot of people tonight, and then that's going to
lead us into the next stream afterwards, to talk about
composite peopostasis. This is language that is used by a
lot of the fathers from even to the twentieth century,
Like you'll see it being used by Saint Justin Popovich.
So it's it's quite a common term to be used,
but a lot of people misunderstand what it means.
Speaker 1: Very common in sane Maximus. Also, I wanted to ask
you too, before you go any further, Sure, could you explain? Uh,
I haven't seen what shamun. And people are saying, like
what are they misunderstanding and what are they criticizing about paradigms?
Speaker 2: Right, So they look at paradigms as basically saying that
this is all kind of philosophical mumbo jumbo, that you're
just inventing things, and that you can't really get to
the truth apart from scripture, and that basically your only
means or your primary source, should be scripture and that's
where you extract whatever you know theologically has to be
restricted to scripture. And so then they'll say that you
can get lost in the philosophical language. The metaphysics and
you can construct paradigms that can potentially lead you away
from what scripture says. And so they kind of pooh
pooh it and just say you don't really need that.
You just kind of look at how the history unfolds,
and it's like basically reading history absence of any kind
of paradigmatic framework, so that just the text on its own,
the superficial, the surface level text is sufficient enough for
you to understand what the Fathers are teaching and what
the Church teaches.
Speaker 1: Now, do they mean just the Protestant idea of perspecuity
of scripture or perspecuity of all texts in general? This
is this is kind of a Protestant assumption maybe something
that Shamun is carrying over. Y.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's most definitely carrying that over when he's reading
the Fathers as well. And so it's basically the quote
mining of the Fathers is kind of injecting into the
Fathers whatever superficial understanding of particular terminology is being used,
and just trying to force the text to say that
rather than looking at what a father says in throughout
like the entirety of his corpus, how he's constructing a
paradigm and what the paradigm is that he's functioning under,
so that you can understand how exactly those terms are
meant to be understood, because he'll, like a lot of
the Fathers, they will use the same term to mean
different things, so they'll use it in different ways. And
I will demonstrate that tonight with Saint Cyril, for example.
And if you don't understand the paradigm that Saint Cyril
and other Fathers are working from, what their general thrust is,
you are going to commit a lot of word concept
fallacy and you're just not really going to understand what
is being taught.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of equivocation, a lot of word concept
fallacies in this debate, and a lot of debates obviously
have the same problem. Muslims commit the same error. For example,
today we were going back and forth with various people
talking about the way Mormons utilize the term, you know, godhead.
For example. Mormons will say, oh, I agree with you,
we both believe in the Godhead, but they mean a
very different thing by that term. And so likewise, mia Fusius,
all of these terms have to be situated in some context,
and then a broader paradigm. So the book, the paragraph
you're reading has a context within a chapter. The chapter
has a context within the work, The work has a
context within wherever that Saint at theologian is writing and
from what system they're coming through or from. And then,
I mean, I'm not trying to cut Chai off. I
just want to make this point because it's a very
very common mistake. Same Basil said. Most heretics make errors
in grammar. They can't make basic distinctions between words and reference,
and distinct distinctions between the reference. So you've all heard
me critique you know, Roman Catholics when they say Pagan's
believe in logos. John one is logos. Therefore John one
and the Pagans were all talking about the same logos.
It's not necessarily the case. That's why the paradigm will
determine the meaning and the reference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Maybe just before we go on, maybe just
make a known case. Some people are asking where David is.
David had some last mint of things that he couldn't
show up, So unfortunately he's going to miss out on
this stream, but God willing, he will join us for
the other streams. Yeah, okay, go ahead, Okay, so we'll
get into paradigms. So basically, let me just click on that.
So this was a first slide from the very very
first presentation, just kind of the preamble of breaking down
how I envision the various parts in this series to unfold.
So the part one, which was the two streams that
we've done already, was kind of setting the stage as
to what the Orthodox metaphysics kind of looks like. Where
we're going with things in this Part two is going
to be obviously the paradigm's compet and essence energies distinction. Now,
the essence energy is distinction. It is very relevant to Christology.
A lot of the times Jay will talk about it
in a triadological context, but it is very relevant to Christology,
not saying that you haven't talked about it in a
crystological context. But we're going to hyper focus on that
here and just demonstrate why it's important to have essence
energy distriction when we're talking about Christ and the two natures.
And then Part three Church of the East and Islamic metaphysics,
Aristotelian metaphysics in part four, Oriental metaphysics in part five.
Now this is really important because a lot of people
are kind of saying, is, well, how are you refuting
the Orientals when you keep talking about the Nestorians all
the time in the Church of the East all the time,
where's the reputation of the Orientals. So the reason why
I'm spending a lot of time talking about the Nestorian
position in the Church of the East position is because,
first of all, we both fall under the umbrella term
of like Diophysites. But whereas we're using that same term,
we are not subscribing to the same paradigms, the same metaphysics.
We are very very different in terms of our theology,
and so we really need to separate the Nestorians proper
as represented by the Church of the East from the
Orthodox position so that you get a clear understanding of
how we are not Nestorians, how Nestorian dual subject christology
is very different from what we teach. So that's the
one thing. But then the other thing is is to
understand how the Orientals are actually making a similar metaphysical
claim as the Nestorians.
Speaker 1: You really can't understand these two without both the right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. So that's exactly what's happening. Is the
Orientals and the Nestorians, they make a metaphysical move that
is in common that they share with each other that
Orthodoxy completely rejects. And then once they both make that
same metaphysical move, the Nestorians carry it in one direction,
the Orientals carry it in the other direction. And so
you're just basically seeing the two extremes of how that
metaphysical principle plays out and how then you really do
get in the Nestorian side, the two subject Christology, but
from a two subject Cristology. In the Orientals you kind
of reduce it to a monophysite the form of monophysitism.
So it's kind of ironic that the Oriental position can
both be monophysite and Nestorian at the same time, but metaphysically,
that's exactly what's happening. And so we're going to lead
up to talking about Oriental metaphysics more proper, like the
exact theology that we see severus of antioch writing and
advocating for, and that's going to come later on in
part five, and so then you're going to really appreciate
and see how a lot of this stuff unfolds and
the implications of that Nestorian metaphysical move that the Orientals
are making. And then we're going to go into the
ecumenical councils and that's where we'll properly look at what's
being taught at the Ecumenical councils, how they are intertwined,
and address a lot of the critic that the Orientals
have towards us with regards to Chalcedon the Fifth Council,
our reading of the Third Council, this supposed like neo Chalcedonianism,
where apparently it's like we're reading back like later theological developments,
we're reading that back into the Third Ecumenical Council and
making the Third Ecumenical Council say what it's not saying.
So we're going to address all of that. That's not
going to be an issue for us to address. I'm
going to look at the Church of the East synods,
and this is going to be very important because within
the Church of the East it was not always hardcore
like Theodorian or Nestorian. There was a more orthodox friendly
strand within the Church of the East that after Baby
kind of had his way with his synods that he
nestorianized the church and basically persecuted that more kind of
orthodox strand within the Church of the East. So that's
going to be very good example to just show historically
that the Church of the East claims to say that
it's always been monolithic from Apostolic times, that that's just
a bunch of nonsense, that is not the case. The
Church of the East did have a thorough and nestorianization
later on down the road, and that it's that they
did have a branch that was a lot more in
line with orthodoxy. Part eight we'll go into some ecclesial history.
More to be said on that, and then Part nine
oriental quote mining. That's kind of where we'll look at
a lot of the arguments that the Orientals are making
and how they're using quotes, and a lot of times
even using the same quotes that we're using. But basically
at this point we're going to have the paradigms completely
fleshed out, will have the Orthodox paradigm fleshed out, will
have Severus's paradigm fleshed out, and so now you'll see
how we're both reading the same text by saying Cyril,
but how it's being distilled in the respective paradigms. And
then once you see that, we'll see what are the
logical entailments and conclusions that you can draw from these paradigms,
and how the Orientals will lead into a lot of
nonsensical positions, whether it leads into tritheism, whether it makes
the incarnation trivial. We'll look at like the harrowing of Hades,
how that completely breaks down in both the Historian and
the Oriental positions, and how only Orthodoxy makes sense of
the harrowing of Hades. So these are all things that
like Scripture talks about that we're all aware of, that
we believe in. But when you don't have the right paradigm,
you'll see the implications of these metaphysical principles that the
Orientals and historians are making, and how it cannot actually
make sense of what Saint Cyril is saying, and what
the other Fathers are are saying, what the ecumenical councils
are teaching, so moving on. So this saddens me being
from the Serbian Orthodox Church myself, this really saddened me
when former Patriarch Irenae of the Serbian Orthodox Church he
met with the so called patriarch moder Ignostius after him
the second of the Syriac Oriental Church or so called Church,
and the tone of that meeting suggests that reunion between
the Orthodox and the Orientals is inevitable. And so basically
from the Syriac Patriarch's website, his Holiness referring to Patriarch
modic not just from the second, we called the visit
of the Serbian Patriarch to our church in Sweden, where
he had the chance to meet with the faithful there,
his Holiness added those faithful long for the day on
which we partake of the same one eucharistic chalice, after
the theologians of both churches agreed that we confess the
same belief in our Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate word.
So that is a bunch of nonsense. We do not
believe that we confess the same belief we hold to
different christologies. And so whether or not this is an
ecumenist effort or this is just wilful ignorance, I don't
want to speculate, But nevertheless, this is just it's very sad,
and it flies in the face of what has historically
been the position of the Orthodox Church. And it's basically
saying that the Ecumenical Councils got it wrong. Okay, that
the Ecumenical Councils were not led by the Holy Spirit,
and so that is something that really does need to
be addressed. And so even though you do have elements
within Orthodox and the Oriental spheres that we that say
that we allegedly believe or share the same Christology, the
fact is we do not. And so we need to
follow the examples of the Ecumenical Councils and basically demonstrate
that the desire to see Christian unity must be grounded
in establishing correct Christology and to promote Christology that is
contrary to what has been promulgated by the Ecumenical Councils
and subsequently exposited by church fathers like Saint Cyril of Alexandria,
Saint Maximus, the Confessors in John of Damascus and saying
g Agri Palamas, who taught in accordance with the edicts
of these ecumenical councils, is to deny the desire to
truly seek Christian unity. So, if we believe that the
Orthodox Church is the true Church and that the Ecumenical
Councils got it right, then we need to insist that
people who say that they profess the same beliefs with
us come into communion with us, and that means to
accept all of the ecumenical councils, accept all of our saints,
because we cannot be in communion. If you reject our saints,
we cannot be in communion if you reject our ecumenical
councils that we say are guided by the Holy Spirit.
It's as simple as that. And if they're saying that
we truly do profess the same belief then the Syriacs
or whoever is part of the Oriental Churches should not
have a problem to simply accept all the councils. Now,
obviously they won't, and it's proof that we don't actually
believe the same thing. And so this series that we're
doing here is meant to demonstrate to people not to
fall for this kind of a lie being perpetrated. We
don't believe the same thing, and we cannot compromise the faith.
Before we get into the paradigms and talking about building
up our paradigms, I was going to look at just
putting together some working definitions of some key terms. Now,
these terms they have had various usages throughout the history
of the Church, and by certain fathers, they never always
had exactly the same usage. But for our intents and purposes,
unless we use it in a different sense, this is
more or less the sense that we are going to
be using it. Whenever we say these particular terms so hypostasies,
it denotes a real ontological concretization of an essence. And
so one hypostasis is distinguished from another hypostasis because it
has distinguishing properties. For example, the father and son are
distinguished because the father is unbegotten while the son is begotten. However,
a hypostasis is not the properties themselves, so the father
is not unbegottenness and the son is not begottenness, but
rather is an ontology in which those properties subsist and
or are realized. A hypostasis can and hypostatize a plurality
of essences yet maintain its singular ontology. Each of these
essences will have for its subject the same hypostasis, but
we're in the hypostasis may be in a different mode
of existence. And that's what we're getting at when we
say an hyposthetize is to have a particular mode of existence,
and so Christ is a single hypostasis that exists as
divine and human.
Speaker 1: Can I need to interject here because I know you
haven't gotten to pros upon yet. But at the time
of Nicea this confused a lot of people because at
Nicea it spoke of one hypostasis in God. But that's
because the early definition was the broad sense that John
Damascus lists as one of the senses in Fount of Knowledge,
and that is that it's just the concretization of an essence.
But as you get into the post Nicene era, particularly
after the Cappadocians, and more specifically in John Damascus, it
becomes a and I would argue in Cyril two, mcguckan
makes this point, hypostasis becomes more specifically the subject or
the agent that has the nature and that specifically is
pros upon. In fact, in Fount of Knowledge and on
the Orthodox Faith, he identifies hypistosis as person. When John
Damascus defines it, he says, it's the same sense as
Peter or Paul, who are persons who have a human essence.
So we have to distinguish essence and hopistosis over time,
and maybe you're going in that direction, but it's very
important because if we don't do this, if we keep
the old Nicene definition, it will get confusing because for example,
there would be three essences in the Godhead, which is tritheism.
So we don't want to concrete tize in the Trinity
three essences. But it is important to note that the
early usage of hoopistosis is the instantiation of an essence,
but eventually by the Fifth Council explicitly which which says
that the only hypostasis or person in Christ is the
second person of the Trinity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're spot on, Jay. The reason why I'm kind
of going in this with the way I phrased it
is because this older usage is very much what.
Speaker 1: The exactly this is, though the Orientals will keep that
I think.
Speaker 2: Right exactly okay, exactly now in terms of person or prosopon,
so it denotes the form, manner, or properties in which
a hypostasis is manifest and in its plain meaning, the
Greek term prospone just means a face or a mask,
as was used in Greek theater, and so then that
mask would identify the character being portrayed. That is relevant
for Nestorianism, and when we looked in the first two
parts of the series, how we looked at the threefold
ontology that the Church of the East promotes, where they
had like the kana, Kunuma and Parsupa. So they they
give an ontological distinction between prosopone and hypostasis or Parsupa
and kuma. So it's kind of important that they still
keep that kind of in an understanding of person. But
for Orthodoxy we have person being synonymous with hypostass and
you will see Saint Cyril actually uses the term interchangeably
as synonymous with each other. And it speaks to this,
this what you spoke about a moment ago, how it's
picking out like the individual the subject.
Speaker 1: Yes, yep.
Speaker 2: Now there's a term the hypostatic union, and this is
really important. And both us as Orthodox and the Orientals
will profess belief in the hypostatic union. Now the Nestorians
they reject the hypostatic union. They go for what's called
the prosopic union because they distinguish between hypostasis in person,
and so the Nestorian union is basically a union of idioms,
it's not a union in the subject. But for us,
I think one of the clearest statements of how to
understand the hypostatic union comes from the Fifth Ecumenical Council,
specifically Canon five. And I read it in the last stream,
but the word last presentation of streams, and I'll just
read it again because it is really fundamental. So it says,
if anyone so understands the one hypostasis of our Lord
Jesus Christ as allowing the meaning of many hypostases, and
tries thereby to introduce into the mystery of Christ two
hypostasies or two persons, and in relation to the two
persons that he is introducing, speaks of one person according
to merit and honor and worship, as the insane theodorta.
And the story is wrote and misrepresents the Holy Council
at Chalcedon as using the term one hypostasis according to
this impious conception, but does not profess that the Word
of God was united to flesh hypostatically, and that therefore
he has one hypostasis or one person, and that the
Holy Council of Childstourne professed one hypothesis of our Lord
Jesus Christ. In this way, let him be anathema, for
the Holy Trinity has received no addition of person or
hypostasis even after the incarnation of God, the word one
of the Holy Trinity, So that's really important. And this
thing about the united to flesh hypostatically, this is basically
meaning that the one hypostasis of Christ that is divine
becomes in fleshed. It's not that you have now a
human hypostasis that conjoins or mixes with a divine hypostasis,
but it's that the divine hypothesis becomes in fleshed without
necessitating the introduction of an additional hypostasis. So Christ is
not composed of many hypostases, Okay, and that's how we
understand the hypostatic union. There's another longer explanation that of
the hypostatic union that is found in the person of Christ. Basically,
it's Emperor Saint Justinian's writing. And I'm not going to
read the entire text. You guys can go through and
find it in the book. You've got the references there,
or you can view it from the slide here that
you see on screen. But basically the underlined portions, I'm
just going to read that. So it's the divine logos
made for himself in his own hypostasis. Flesh that was
taken from her, meaning the blessed Tokus, and that was
endowed with a reasonable and intellectual soul i e. Human nature. Okay,
So the hypostasis, the flesh is in sort, the hypostasis
is being in fleshed. Okay. So the logos made for
himself in his own hypostasis.
Speaker 1: And then and here, by the way, for us, this
is referring to the subject or the agent that instantiates
the nature, not just merely a nature instantiated, but the
subject or the agent that has the nature correct.
Speaker 2: And so again he's clear one hypostasis or prosopone of
God the Word, even with the flesh. Yes, So here
you have the identification of the prosopone, the person with
the hypostasis, And he's saying that you still have only
the one hypostasis of God the Word, even with the flesh.
So it's saying that even with the flesh, you still
have the one hypostasis that is God the Word. And
then later on it says he used the term nature
and he's referring here to Saint Cyril, because you have
that phrase one nature of God the Word incarnate. So
he's saying here he used the term nature in this
formula for hypostasis, and in the writings in which he
makes use of this formula, and here is the critical part,
he frequently follows it by adding either the terms sun
or logos or only begotten, which are not names that
indicate nature, but the hypostasis or prosopon. So what Christ is.
So what Saint Cyril is talking about is when Saint
Cyril is using that formula, he's referring to the subject.
Who is the subject. It is not just simply the nature.
It is the person that is the that is Christ,
that is the hypostasis, that is Christ. And so that
is the way we are understanding this terminology to be
relevant to understanding the hippostotic union. And that's coming straight
from Saint Cyril. So we're not simply reading nature or
hypostasis and just putting any kind of definition we want
to it. We're looking at the context, who is being referenced,
what exactly is being referenced, And so Saint Cyril himself
is making it clear one nature of God. The word
incarnate is referring to the Sun. It's not referring to
just simply like a collection of idioms. Then there's a
footnote added by Russia, and he's basically saying the hypostasis
of Christ is the divine logos, who is himself Jesus.
Note above, how Justinian refers to the Lord Jesus as
the one who possesses in himself divine in human natures.
The hypostasis that is produced then, quote unquote produced is
the one we see in our minds when we contemplate
the union. It is not the actual hypostasis of Christ himself,
for that hypostasis is the eternally existing divine logos. The
term quote unquote composite Christ, and we're going to come
back that in part two or the stream two moreover,
refers to the divine logos, not to the divine nature,
and is simply a way of saying that the divine
Logos becomes incarnate by adding to his previously divine quote
unquote mode of existence, or what we'll use as the
term an hypositization, a human mode of existence, taking on
himself on his hypostasis all the attributes and properties of
human nature without becoming a human hypostasis. He thereby becomes
fully human, but he remains fully God. Both in nature
and in identity. So basically that who Christ is always
remains the divine hypostasis of the second person of the Godhead.
That's what basically is being said here. Then we have
what I'd like to call the hypose tanic union, and
that's just the hippostatic union as understood by the Orientals.
And this is very interesting and it comes from Severus
of Antioch, and this is where he is now going
to admit that the Oriental position believes in multiple hypostasies
comprising Christ. And this is important because a lot of Orientals,
who are very ignorant of their own tradition, of their
own theology, don't actually understand that they subscribe to multiple
hypostasies in Christ, and they think that's just a historian move,
but fail to understand that, No, the Oriental position very
much subscribes to having multiple hypostasies in Christ. So what
does Severus say, do you call the flesh possessing an
intelligent soul, which God the Word voluntarily united to himself
hypostatically without any change, a specimen or a generality, that is,
one soul possessing hypostasis, or the whole human generality. It
is manifest that if you wish to give a right
minded answer, you will say one soul possessing body. Accordingly,
we say that from it and the hypostasis of God,
the word the ineffable union was made for the whole
of the Godhead and the whole of humanity in general,
were not joined in a natural union, but special hypostasis
in the plural and the holy. And why Cyril plainly
witnesses to us in that in the third chapter or anathema,
he spoke, thus, whoever divides the one Christ into hypostasis
after the union, associating them in association of honor or
of authority only, and not rather injunction of natural union,
let him be anathema. So I will get to exactly
this citation that Severus brings up from Saint Cyril's third
letter to Nestorius, and basically that particular anathema. We'll get
to that. We will talk about that in this presentation,
but then we'll look at it in greater detail when
we get to the ecumenical councils proper. But basically, you
see the argument here that Severus is making. He's basically
saying that you have to have hypostasis for the divinity
and for the humanity, because otherwise, in Christ, if you
don't have a specific keypostasis for as humanity, it's as
if he is taking on the entirety of humanity in
his incarnation. So for Severus, he's making the same metaphysical
move as the Nestorians, requiring first a specific concretization that
is to that particular subject or connected to that subject
in this case Christ, and so it has to necessitate
a complete subject that is now created. Now the Orientals
will say that that subject it never is separable from
the logos, and so you're looking at the same identity.
But that is not the case. It is required to
have a complete concretization in the hypostasis, which means that
you have to have the individual in his entirety in
order to constitute human nature or humanity to unite. Because
if you don't have the entirety of the hypostasis as
a separable individual or even in your mind separable, then
you don't really have a true union. And that's going
to be a metaphysical problem for the Orientals to address.
I don't know if you want to chime in on that, Jay,
or I can move.
Speaker 1: On no, I mean this is good. I think that
it's important to note too that the Orthodox physician, as
I understand, also disagrees because we think that Christ is
a singular subject and he possessed a single human body.
But he also was able, as the Seventh Ectu Medical
Council and even Cyril and many other church fathers say
he was able to unite himself to universal human nature
to raise it by virtue of being a divine person.
So because he's a divine person, even though his body
is singular that he assumed, he's also able to recapitulate
all that Adam lost in terms of Adam's nature by
the Son of God, assuming the totality of human nature.
That's why all men are resurrected, even if they're outside
of Christ. That cosmic scope that Saint Maximus stress reaches
to all individuals. But that doesn't mean everybody's saved. I'm
just pointing out that Christ is a singular divine subject,
but also, as Professor Manzariitis notes, he is the universal person. Yeah.
Speaker 2: People who are a little bit familiar with philosophy, they
might actually be picking out here that the oriental position
is basically like a form of nominalism. Yes, and yeah,
you will see normalism develop later on in medieval times properly,
that kind of in the Western sphere. But really you
do see the kernel of nominalism in the Oriental position,
and that's going to become very apparent when you start
getting into particular natures of each person.
Speaker 1: Could I add to that, there's an interesting dialectic here
because in some of the Orientals there's a tendency towards
Aristotelian nominalism, with John Philipponis, who reduces hypostasis to particular
natures and that leads him to the tritheism position. But
also in Severus, some people have shown and argued that
Severus has a neoplatonic dialectical definition of human will and energy,
and so he thinks that the human will and energy
has to be overcome, hence monothelitism on energism and the
tendency in that direction because of the natural tension between
the creator and the uncreated.
Speaker 2: Yep, we'll get into that in part five when we look.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I figured we what I just want to mention
that as that came to mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, definitely, that all the oriental metaphysics that
whole thing that we're going to blow that wide open
in part five here just setting the stage. So now
examples of why paradigms are necessary, and so now these
next sets of slides is basically meant to kind of
addressed this criticism by the low IQ crowd, which includes
Sam Shamoun, of why they don't understand the necessity of paradigms.
So Saint Cyril in his letter, his third letter to Nestorius,
he makes it quite clear and he tells Nestorius basically
that reciting the same words, specifically of the Nicene creed,
that's not enough. You need to understand what exactly is
being recited. And how do you understand what's being recited, Well,
you have to have the correct paradigm, because if you
don't have the correct paradigm, you set up a competing paradigm.
You're going to understand it in a different way. I'm
not going to read the whole quote there, but it's
basically that's what he's saying. He says basically that you, Nestorius,
you can't just say the words. You need to actually
demonstrate that you understand the theology behind those words, and
that theology is based on our paradigm, the Orthodox paradigm.
And what's really interesting here is Saint Cyril says that
basically unless he anathematizes, unless the story is anathematizes his
own position, your own founld and profane doctrines, and that
in future you will hold and teach us all of
us do bishops and teachers and leaders of congregations in
both East and West. So not only is Saint Cyril
telling the stories that his metaphysical paradigm is incorrect, but
he's also talking about how Apostolic Christianity is when everyone
teaches the same doctrine, has the same paradigm. Okay, there's
no such thing as quote unquote app Aostolic Christianity, like
Sam Schmoun wants to portray, where everyone, even if they
have material succession from the Apostles, can believe whatever they want.
Contrary to Orthodoxy, there's only one faith. Saint Cyril is
making that very clear. There's only one faith that must
be professed, and that's Orthodoxy. Okay, So this whole Apostolic Christianity,
that's a bunch of garbage. Okay, it doesn't exist. If
you want to just basically take all these different competing
theologies and just say we're all apostolic. No, Saint Cyril
is telling you either you teach what we're teaching or
you're not apostolic.
Speaker 1: It also shows the fraudulent nature of Jimmy Aiken and
Voice of Reasons nonsense that the Council of Ephicis got
it wrong about Astorias. They don't understand that. You can't say,
oparate the Karellian theology and the condemnations and the anathemas
from the totality picture here. So to say that Ephesis
got it wrong on the Storis's theology would actually undermine
the very things that Kay's quoting, and it would undermine
the anathemas, which are necessary elements of Ephesus. So you
can't hold to Ephesus and say that they got it
wrong on the Storias. That's so absurd, it is yeap.
Speaker 2: So let's take a look at another example here, one
from scripture. So you have two Peter one four by
which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious
promises that through these you may be partakers of the
divine nature your feces. So how do we understand this?
How do you partake of the divine nature. Well, if
you subscribe to the Orthodox paradigm, we partake of the
divine energies and not the divine essence. But if you
subscribe to the Roman Catholic paradigm, then we partake of
the divine essence, because there is no essence, energies distinction.
Speaker 1: Well, to be clear, that is where it should lead.
But they have dogmatized the position of partaking of a
created accident. So their view is that the grace that
you actually partake of can't be the divine essence. They
agree with us, there there is no energies to partake of,
so it's got to be some supernatural creation. And that's
Council of Trent. That's lud we got.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean they can refine that down the road.
But just from a simple perspective of Orthodoxy, well, we
have the energy's doctrine. If you're not partaking of the energies,
then I mean either the essence or some some created effect.
Now let's look at scripture. We've got other examples. So
in John one eighteen where no one has seen God
at any time, and then you have an exodus. So
the Lord spoke to Moses face to face. Okay, but
wait a minute, how can the Lord speak to Moses
face to face? But yet no one has seen God
at any time. So here's a reference to, in one instance,
the essence, because we cannot see the essence of God directly,
but God interacts with us through the energies, and so
Moses would interact with Christ on Mount Sinai through the energies,
through God's energies.
Speaker 1: In the text in Exodus, when God hides Moses in
the cleft and passes by, God says, I will show you.
My goodness is plural, meaning many energies, not just one energy,
but goodness says yeah.
Speaker 2: So this is also a demonstration to people like sam
who has criticized the energy's doctrine. So this is scriptural.
So though we may unfold the metaphysics in a little
bit more developed form to basically show how the energy's
doctrine unfolds in a paradigmatic sense, it is still fundamentally
part of scripture. And this is where we're ultimately getting out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, as I pointed out to Shamoun when
he made the stupid, mocking statements of the divine energies,
every Protestant knows about strong concordance, and if you look
up one seven, five three, it's literally all the uses
of the New Testament term innergaia.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. Now I'm going to switch gears a little
bit and I'm going to talk about Islam, and this
is where the idea of paradigms becomes very relevant. And
it's in just that I've yet to see I mean,
I do these kind of argumentations, paradigm level arguments against Muslims,
but I've yet to see anybody else do this. So
it just goes to show how poorly the wider quote
unquote Christian community is unaware of paradigms, and they don't
really get the understanding of how to use paradigms in
interacting with other faiths. So in Islam, the concept of
divine quote unquote love means obedience to a law that
results in rewards, and disobedience leads to punishments, and a
person cannot come close or near to a law through
divine love that resembles the kind of love that let's say,
biological fathers and sons have for each other. Contrary to Christianity,
a law loving someone can never be understood as a
law uniting creation unto himself, or caring about creation as
a father would care for his son. So now imagine
that the only kind of love that is exchanged between
like a biological father and son, is where the father
will reward the son for obedience and the son desires
to be obedient. Okay. And that's the only way that
the father and son can interact to show love for
each other. And that's the way love is defined. Well,
that is exactly the kind of relationship that the Islamic
allaw has to man, and that is the Islamic paradigm.
And it's through that paradigm how we are to understand
the Islami notion of quote unquote divine love. And I
gave you the reference here. You can read it. I
mean I can even just read it just to show
you how it's worded. It's just a very short blurb.
The prophet was told about the man who finished his
recitation in prayer by reciting Sir one twelve Purity of Faith.
The man said that it states the attributes of God,
the Lord of Grace, and he loved to recite it
for that reason. The Prophet said, tell him that God
loves him. Imam Almazari said God's love of his servants
is his will to reward them and to bestow find
bounties on them. Others said his love of his servants
is rewarding them and bestowing bounties on them, not the
will to do so. Kadiyad said their love of God
may be their inclination towards him, but He is above
feeling inclined to anyone. It is also said that their
love of God is continuing to obey him. Okay, so
it's very clear that this is how you understand divine love,
how you understand a law and his relationship to creation
in the Islamic context. So when a Muslim reads the
Bible and encounters the concept of divine love, does he
understand it according to the Christian paradigm or the Islamic paradigm.
And so this is how you unfold the Muslim struggling
to understand Christianity because they filter it through the Islamic
paradigm and not just divine love. Basically, everything that they
can see in the Bible, they're going to read it
through their Islamic lens. Another popular example is the meaning
and purpose of quote unquote Messiah in Islam versus Christianity,
and the answers are comical when you ask Muslims basically,
what does it mean for Jesus to be the misas
because Muslims have no idea the Islamic paradigm does not
have the capacity to understand the Messiah in the Christian context.
For them, the Messiah is just somebody who wipes like
Jesus would wipe over the face, and he would perform
a miracle by doing so, and that's why he's called
the Messiah. There's no kind of conception of Messiah as
the divine Savior. And so when you look at this
stark contrast in the different paradigms and how you can
use the same words to denote completely different ideas because
the paradigms are completely different. So, in a similar way,
the heterodox within the Christian tradition, whether it be the
Nestorians or the Orientals, they set up competing paradigms to
that of Orthodoxy. And so this is why paradigm level
analysis is crucial because for example, we and the Orientals
will agree that Saint Cyril said such and such. Okay,
but now we need to understand what exactly did he mean? Okay,
And we can't just look at oh, you're going to
give this word this definition, we're going to give that
word this definition. Well, how is it that their respective
sides are coming up with how to understand those particular words,
because we're looking at the paradigm that Saint Cyril is
presenting us, We're looking at the entirety of his writings.
We're looking at what makes sense with what he is saying,
what the councilors are promoting, what the fathers are teaching,
And we're not going to try to shoehorn in these
quote minds to force the text to say something yes,
that doesn't.
Speaker 1: This is a really important point because this is such
a common mistake that's made not just by Orientals or
historians or but it comes up with Islam, it comes
up with Protestants all the time. There is this assumption
that words just have a self evident meaning. Words just
mean when they say, they say what they mean. There's
no word that has a self evident meaning apart from
some context, some lexigraphical setting that gives it that meaning.
Nothing has meaning in a standalone vacuum way, and language
is essentially because language is like one of the most
obvious areas where like there's no vacuum you know, meaning here,
like obviously there's a broader context within the totality of
that language or that system or that grammar that gives
it that meaning. And this is why so often on
my channel for so many years, not just myself, many others,
I mean, Perry does this too. We always talk about
paradigm level settings because systems in form in a broader
sense the particular pieces within the system. So if you
have a worldview, if you have a theological system, you
have some computer system, it's going to be the same way, right,
files are going to operate within the totality operating system,
and so in the same way in theology, everybody has
some systematic theology, even if they don't systematize it or
think that they do. And so it doesn't work to
take the some inflexible usage of a term. Just like
at nicea one homo Usius Hopistas said, nicea one doesn't
have the exact same meaning even in the cave dooceans,
and even later on it has. There's flexibility with words.
And there's a great quote by Saint jerome I forget
exactly where it is. I read it many years ago,
But Saint Drum said something like echoing Basil, heretics always
are completely inflexible when it comes to words.
Speaker 2: Yep, Paradigms provide meaningful answers. Okay, So metaphysics has always
been an integral part of theological understanding. It's crucial for
the ecumenical councils. You read Saint Basil and Saint Gregory's
treatises on against Eunomius, you will see clearly that they're
going into metaphysics. You read Saint Cyril, Saint Maximus. Metaphysics
is everywhere, and it should be apparent to people that
you need metaphysics to just simply even understand what is
meant by simple questions like what do you mean by hypostasis?
You need to under you need to explain hypostasis. Well,
you need a metaphysical paradigm to understand hypostasis fees usia.
So to provide an answer to what do you mean
by hypostasis is inherently to answer a metaphysical question. But
now what follows. Some of you may be familiar from
my community post that I made. I lifted that material
to put it into these slides because I think it
will illustrate the point. So then you will hear the
Orientals go on and babble in their streams for hours
on end and try to provide you the context of oh,
this is really what Saint Cyril was talking about. But
then you start questioning them on bigger questions within Orthodoxy,
like orthodoxy proper that Orthodoxy can address. But can they
provide the same kinds of responses, And in my estimation,
I don't think that they can, because you never hear
them talking about these bigger level questions like, for example,
would Christ have incarnated irrespective of the Fall? I have
never once heard any Oriental or historian ever talk about that.
Now in Orthodoxy we talk about it. We have an answer,
we will say yes. But this is a question that
you cannot answer without having a paradigm. And so in
if you do provide the answer, then give us the
explanation why this would not be the case. So go
and ask the Orientals. Go and ask Aigan to explain
to you whether or not Christ would have incarnated irrespective
of the fall, and see what he's going to say,
and then ask him, well, how do you know that
what's your paradigm? How is your paradi I'm informing you
of that, And then go and ask Aigan because he
so much really wants to have a debate with us,
and you guys are saying debate agen, So just hold
on to that thought. What is the purpose of our existence? Now,
Orthodoxy is going to give you a very straightforward answer.
I's gonna say it's theosis. It's very clear, Theosis. That's
the purpose of our existence. But you go and ask
Aigan what is the purpose of our existence? He's not
gonna tell you theosis because Orientals reject the concept of theosis.
He's gonna give you maybe some other nonsensical answer. And
then you ask, how can the saints hear our prayers? Okay, Well,
good luck answering that question if you reject the energy's doctrine,
because without the energy's doctrine, it doesn't make sense that
the saints can hear our prayers. Okay, and that is
part of the metaphise paradigm. Okay, So when the Orientals
reject energies, ask them, how do the saints here are prayers?
And let's see and ask them, how do you know
what's your paradigm what informs you? Okay, So these paradigm
level questions, they inform us of what orthodoxy teaches, and
it contrasts that with the various heresies, and it's what
sets everyone apart. And so what we're doing here is
we're elevating the discussion so that it's not just about
what does person so and so say. It's elucidating the worldview,
the paradigm of what person so and so is actually
promoting when they say such and such. What is the paradigm?
What is the worldview? Okay? And now let's look in
a little bit more detail in exactly these three questions.
How do we understand it as orthodox? So why would
Christ incarnate irrespective of the fall? Well, Christ wants to
unite creation or slash humanity unto himself in order to
make accessible the divine love to creation to humanity. So
now here is the implications of Christ being a divine
only hypostasis. So, the Father loves the son, and if
the son incarnates, then the divine love that the Father
has for the son equally applies to the son's human
mode of existence, because the son, in his divinity and
humanity is one in the same hypostasis, and so receiving
the Father's love becomes proper to human nature, which in
turn allows us to also receive the Father's love through Christ. Okay,
so now ask the Orientals, how are you going to
receive the Father's love? Why does Christ need to have
a human hypostasis in order for humanity to receive the
Father's love or to be partakers of divine love? Okay?
Now why is theosis necessary? So we all know of
the image of God within us, but Scripture uses another
term in addition to image of God. Scripture talks about
the likeness of God, and so what is the likeness
of God? Well, as humans, we have the potential to
be godly, and so we read in the Fathers. You'll
see it in Saint Maximus, and I believe it, you'll
see it in Saint Anthonasius, where it's basically God became
man and so that man can become God. And actualizing
this potential is impossible without deification. And so I come
up with this analogy. Think of it as still images
versus motion film. So the still images have the potential
to be expressed as motion film, in other words, like
to be brought to life. And what does Christ teach us?
Don't consider ourselves alive unless He dwells in us. And
it's through deification in Christ that this image of God
within us is given life and we live in the
likeness of God. Okay, And then why is it that
saints can hear our prayers? Because they're energetically united in
Christ and participate in His divine activities. And it's though
the saints do not become divine in essence, they are
alive in Christ and participate in the day energies. And
it's in this way that we are in communion with
one another and the saints in Christ. And what's more
is when you start looking at these types of questions
and answering them to create for you a worldview. So
all of these paradigm level questions they interpenetrate each other.
The metaphysics, it has a grounding that interpenetrates all of this,
and it creates for you a coherent worldview. Okay. So
I would say for the Orientals, for the Nestorians, go
and talk to a Muslim and present your metaphysical paradigms
and try to answer to the Muslim satisfaction. These types
of questions and try to present to him a coherent
worldview that he can look at. Oh, this is what
Islam teaches about God and God's relationship to creation, and
this is what Christianity teaches. Okay, you will not be
able to give this type of a worldview from the
Oriental position or from the Nestorian position. Absolutely not. You
will not be able to explain this concept of prayers
to saints or theosis. Why is theosis important? You're not
going to get that, And good luck trying to convince
a Muslim of your Oriental paradigm why he should become
a Christian. In denying theosis and the essence energies distinction,
the Orientals implicitly deny that the image of God has
any real meaning and participation in God is not possible.
And so then as a result of that, praying to
the saints and being in communion with one another it
makes no sense. And it's because they don't understand the
ultimate purpose of Christ's incarnation, which is the transfiguration of
the cosmos to unite with Christ. Now, does Christ's incarnation
redeem us from our sins? Absolutely, not just the incarnation,
but like his death and resurrection, absolutely redeems Us from
our sins. But more than that, Christ's incarnation is ultimately
about transfiguration, and that is not possible if you deny
theosis like the Orientals do. Okay, And it's very interesting
because the Nestorians also deny Theosis. But and we will
talk about this when we get to the Synods of
the Church of the East. There was that strain that
I was talking about that is more Orthodox, not completely Orthodox,
but more in line with Orthodoxy, that existed historically within
the Church of the East. They actually held to a
form of Theosis, and that got stamped out after the
Nestorianization thoroughly of everywhere in the Church of the East.
That branch that existed within the Church of the East,
they got stamped out, but they recognized a form of Theosis.
And so when we examine the writings of Saint Cyril
and others, we look to their paradigms in order to
understand what they are attempting to convey explicitly as well
as implicitly. Okay, And so even though the Orthodox and
the Orientals hold Saint Cyril as a common saint, it's
our Orthodox reading of him that will present the more
coherent and meaningful worldview. So now let's look at what
Saint Cyril is right. And in this particular case, I'm
looking at his third letter to Nestorius. In the previous dreams,
we're looking at his letters to Emperor Theodosius. Now I'm
going to look at his third letter to Nestorius. And
this is an important letter and we're going to come
back to it when we look at the ecumenical councils proper.
But it's also relevant for understanding paradigms, and so in it,
Saint Cyril writes stuff like this, So assert that the
Son of God is from another hypostasis or essence in
this case in the Greek essences usia, or is changeable
or mutable. These the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes. Okay,
So here we see Saint Cyril is using hypostasis in
the sense of essence. Okay, And this is really important.
This using one term or another term. This is common
in Saint Cyril, where he's basically saying, I'm going to
be using this term, but I want you to understand it.
In this sense, he's not giving you a either this
or that. He's saying this, but understand it in this sense,
and so you'll see it later on in the same
letter where he's doing that with hypostasis again. Now the
next thing, what does he say, not rejecting what he
was before, but even after the assumption of flesh and blood,
remaining what he was before, namely God in nature or
feces and truth. For he is utterly changeless and immutable,
ever remaining the same according to the scriptures. So this
is really important. Even after the assumption of flesh and blood,
what he was before? Well, what was he before? He
was a divine hypostasis?
Speaker 1: Yes, Maximus says this too consistently. He underwent no change.
We confess this, by the way.
Speaker 2: Yes, he underwent no change. So what was he before?
You ask yourself that simple question, Agan, what was he before?
He was a divine hypostasis? And after the assumption of
the flesh and blood, what did he remain? He remained
what he was before? What was that? A divine hypostasis? Continuing,
we are to think of one Christ, Jesus, only begotten son,
honored with a single worship together with his own flesh.
We professed that the very one born from God, the
Father as Son and only begotten God, despite being impassible
in his own nature. Oh, what is his own nature divine?
So it's talking about the constitution of Christ, the ontology
of Christ. What do you mean when you say mea feces.
You're talking about the constitution of Christ. So he is
the Son and only begotten God despite being impassable in
his own nature. Oh, we're talking about the divine hypostasis.
Yet it's that divine hypostasis, as Saint Cyril tells us
suffered in the flesh for us according to the scriptures,
and was in the crucified body, making his own the
sufferings of his own flesh, though impassibly. Okay, though impassibly.
It's not talking about a human hypostasis or this non
self subsistent human hypostasis. No, it's talking about the Sun
and only Begotten God, impossible in his own nature feces,
which is a divine hypostasis. By nature or feces, he
is life and is himself the resurrection. That means the
divine hypostasis that is Christ. He is life, not idioms,
not human idioms that come to be with Christ. Once
there's an infleshment. He is life. And who is the he? Oh,
that he who was before the incarnation, who was before
the incarnation? Oh, that's right, the divine hypostasis. You see
the paradigm that Saint Cyril is presenting to us. Let's continue.
Even though the resurrection of the dead is said to
have been through man, we nevertheless understand man to be
the word begotten from God is a human hypostasis. Begotten
of God is the human hypostasis, the word begotten from God.
We nevertheless understand man to be the word begotten from God.
Oh that sounds to me like he's talking about the
divine hypostasis. That's Christ, that's the Sun, that's the logos.
As for the saying of our Savior in the Gospels,
we do not distribute them between two hypostasies or persons.
So now here's an interesting case where he's now talking
directly to Nestorius in his dual subject christology, but now
he's using hypostasis in a different sense, So he's hypostasis
or persons. So right there we see in that same
letter how Saint Cyril is using that word hypostasis, and
he's defining it in two different senses, and he's being
very clear that he does that. So you can clearly
see that Saint Cyril is very precise in his paradigm,
and he's very precise in the wordings when he needs
to elicit exactly what it is that he wants you
to understand. For the one and only Christ is not twofold,
even if he has thought of us having come together
into inseparable union from two different realities. And here the
Greek is using the word pragma, So the word pragma
is basically referring to the ant hypostatization, and so at
that in the time of Saint Cyril, he did not
have the vocabulary to express an hyposthetization that comes later.
But the basic idea of n hypostatization is right there
in Saint Cyril. Okay, So the union is coming from
two different realities, not two different like concretizations of hypostasis
from two different realities. Because the one and only Christ
is not twofold. It is exactly how the Orthodox teach
you have. Christ is one divine hypostasis, and he's inseparable
in an inseparable union in two different realities. That one
divine hypostasis existing in a divine way and in a
human way, and simultaneously existing like that is a union,
and it is inseparable because once Christ in cars, he
never ceases to be human or to exist in a
human mode of existence, and he never ceases to exist
in his divinity. Okay, just as for instance, man has
thought of us coming together from soul and body, and
yet is not twofold, but one from both. He says
to the Jews, now you are seeking to kill me,
a man who has told you the truth. Know Less,
again do we recognize him as God, the Word in
equality and likeness with the Father, despite the limitations of
his manhood. For indeed, we must believe that being God
by nature feces he became flesh, that is, man in
soul by a rational soul. So what is the nature
of Christ? What is sincerel saying divine being God by nature,
and that divinity, that divine person becomes in fleshed. So
his thesis is not changing. He is not taking onto
himself a human hypostatic component. His thesis. His nature remains
the ontology, the hypostatic intology, that is, the divine person.
All the sayings in the Gospels are to be attributed
to a single person prosopon the one incarnate hypostasis of
the word. So here you have hypostasis being equivalent to prosopon.
But notice here what Saint Cyril is saying. There's that
famous phrase, the one incarnate nature of the word. But
here Saint Cyril is saying one incarnate hypostasis of the word. Oh,
let's go back. What did Saint Cyril say earlier, even
after the assumption of flesh and blood, remaining what he
was before? What was he before? Oh? That's right, he
was a divine hypostasis, and after incarnating, he remained what
he was before. What was he a divine hypostasis? Oh?
But what does it say here a single person pross
upon the one incarnate hypostasis of the word one hypostasis.
Oh wait a minute, Christ incarnates, there's one incarnate hypostasis
of the word. He remains what he was before. What
was he before? He was a divine hippostasi. Oh that
kind of looks like Saint Cyril's paradigm is that Christ
is a divine only hypostasis. Hmmm, gee, I'd like.
Speaker 1: To add I was reminded pulling this book out to
back up pretty much everything that Kay is saying right
around two thousand and seven or eight a very importantcum me.
It came out in two thousand and four from Saint
Vladimir's and I'm not recommending everything from this person, but
this book is really really important, not just for helping
with the issue that we're discussing today, but in two
thousand and eight I read the book and it pretty
much flushed out most of my Western errors when it
came to the incarnation and even the sort of latent
in the Storian tendencies that I had coming from Latin
Catholicism and Calvinistic Protestantism. There's a really good book called
Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy, and not
many people have read the entire text. I've read it
at least twice. And if you read through this book,
most of what we're discussing is demonstrated to literally be
directly in Saint Cyril, even to the point of well
everything that Kay's talking about right now. The identity of
the divine hypostasis of the word. I mean, this is
covered in pages It's covered also on pages one ninety
five that the single subject is the identical subject before
and after the incarnation. That's the person of the word.
And then I would add too that at the end
of the text you don't just have the deposition of Nestorius,
which again refutes this voice of reason saying that Ephysis
got it wrong about Nestorius. Well, that means that the
twelve anathemas are also wrong because they explicitly condemned the
stories's positions. It also explicitly condemns the dual subject theology,
but also the deposition of Nestorius, which is included in
this text, plus the two letters of Serial two six cents,
which include two natures after the incarnation and resurrection. So
these are problem texts that a lot of Orientals are
not going to want to talk about, especially the two
letters to six sensus that Cyrial wrote later on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so since the Holy Virgin gave fleshley birth
to God united to flesh hypostatically, for this reason, we
declare her to be theotokos, not as if the nature
or the thesis of the word had the beginning. Oh
wait a minute, the nature the thesis of the word, what's
the nature, physis of the word. It's the divinity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly as we discussed at the very beginning. Okay,
it's what he shares in common with the Father and
the Spirit exactly.
Speaker 2: So she's called theotokos because not as if the nature,
the feasis of the word, which is divine, had the
beginning of its existence from the flesh, but because as
we have all ready said, he united manhood to himself,
he postatically and underwent fleshly birth from her womb. What's
the nature of the word divinity, one incarnate hypostasis of
the word divinity? What was he before divinity? What was
he after he incarnated? Was the same as what he
was before? What is that divinity? Sorry, not like generic divinity,
but the divine person, because I'm not doing a nature
person collapse.
Speaker 1: And let me add too that a lot of people
get confused over this because they say, well, but are
you saying there, he's identical before and after the incarnation,
So like he didn't become incornate. No, we mean that
he underwent no substantial change. He never ceased being a
divine subject when he added a new nature to the
one that he already possessed. So he enters into a
new mode of but that new mode of being didn't
change his divinity. It never ceased being divine, right, and
he didn't become a tertiam quid hybrid that is neither
human nor divine, but some mix.
Speaker 2: But some mix right. And the Orientals they think they've
answered the objection to the tertiam quid argument, they have not.
I'll touch upon that, but that's gonna come a lot
later in series with the whole thing. But now there
are just two brief points just to finish up with
Saint Cyril here, and that's when we get into those
twelve anathemas proper. And so it says, if anyone in
respect of the One Christ separates the hypostasis after the union,
joining them in mere conjunction according to dignity or authority
or lordship, and not rather by a coming together in
natural union, let him be anathema. So now this is
where the Orientals will say, well, Saint Cyril here is
teaching the One Christ has multiple hypostases because you can't
separate the hypostasis. He's basically saying to the stories, you
can't separate the hypostasis after the union. You have to
keep them together, because if you separate them, then that's anathema.
And so then the Orientals a point to say, as well,
you see Saint Cyril is promoting this notion of hypostasis. Well,
there's a problem here because we already know that in
the same letter Saint Cyril is using the word hypostasis
in different senses. And just look at the next anathema. Afterwards,
he says, if anyone ascribes to two persons prosopa or hypostasis,
So here you have this identification with prosopa two persons
with hypostasis. So he's saying, okay, we can understand hypostasis
and prospa in the same stuff. If anyone ascribes to
two persons or hypostasis the sayings and the Gospels and
apostolic writings. Oh wait a minute, So if we use
the Oriental logic, is Saint Cyril advocating that actually, in
Christ there are two persons and it's the two persons
that unite into one because.
Speaker 1: The words only have one reference.
Speaker 2: I guess, so yeah, words have only run one reference.
So but then hold on a second. If we acknowledge
that Saint Cyril is teaching that, oh, there are actually
two persons united in Christ, well, isn't that a prosopic union?
But wait a minute, was in Saint Cyril opposed to
a prosopic union, he promoted a hypostatic union. So then
if Saint Cyril in the previous anathema is teaching, oh,
there are multiple hypostasis in Christ, but then in the
mathema afterwards he's saying, well, we can understand hypostasis in
the as prosopon, and Saint Cyril is saying, well, if
anyone ascribes to two persons, but then hold on a second,
so are the two persons in union? Wait, oh, sh man,
I'm sorry for you orientals that you guys can't logic. Yeah,
I'm really sorry about that. Yeah, Eigan, I'm really running
from a debate from you. Yeah, because you know you're
just gonna you're gonna just metaphysic trump me. Yeah, okay, sure, buddy, whatever.
You see, it's this kind of inability to nuance the language,
to nuance the paradigms. To see what has Saint Cyril
been talking up to this point, Because the letter ends
with these anathemas, so we're coming into these anathemas with
everything else prior to it. That Saint Cyril is teaching
us and to telling us what his paradigm is. Right,
So how is he saying it? So he says, as
for the saying of our Savior in the Gospels, we
do not distribute them between two hypostases or persons. He's
talking about this, and that's what that anathema is referring to.
And what was Saint Cyril talking about here? The one
and only Christ? Remember, the one and only Christ, that is,
the one incarnate hypostasis of the word or single person
that remained as he was before. What was he before?
He was a divine hypostasis, and he didn't change after incarnating.
So what was he before? A divine hypostasis. But the
single the one and only Christ, is not twofold, and
it's an in separable union of what two different realities
pragma and hyposthetizations. So what he's saying here in this anathema,
he's saying not about Christ being a hyposthetizing two natures
as being anathema. He's talking about the historian position where
you have these concretizations of the natures into divine and humans,
so that you have a dual subject. Yeah, you've got
a dual subject existing. And so because you have a
dual subjects, even if they're conjoined in some way, you
would attribute the divine actions in the gospels to the
divine subject and the human actions to the human subject.
And that's what Saint Cyril is saying, is no, you
cannot do that. Christ is one and only and the
so he exists in the two different realities. And so
all of the activities that you see in the Gospels,
you attribute them to Christ directly. You predicate them directly
to Christ, directly to Jesus, directly to the Logos, directly
to the Sun. Those are all identities across the board.
And so it's in that sense that we understand this
third anathema. And so we know that Christ that Saint
Cyril is not advocating for two persons in Christ. So
you cannot understand the previous anathema to mean that Christ
has multiple hypostases in the prosopic sense, in the concretized sense.
So what is he talking about? What is Saint Cyril
talking about about in that previous anathema, If anyone in
respect of the one Christ separates the hypostasis after the union,
meaning the modes of existence the ant hypostaitization saying that
Christ can divorce his divine existence from his human existence
or joining them in mere conjunction, meaning that you have
separable divine existences and human existences that come together either
into a conjunction or a separation. So go ahead if
you want to believe that Christ or that Saint Cyril
taught that there were two persons in Christ that united
into one person, which is a pro sofic union, which
Saint Cyril rejected. I mean, your argumentation is just unraveling.
Before you please present your paradigm. How you're gonna resolve
all this. Oh, that's right. You're gonna go to history
and you're gonna tell us what the Church taught historically,
because you're gonna just invent what the Church taught historically.
You don't want to go into paradigms because you know what,
you're not able to do paradigms. So you're just gonna
poo poo the paradigms because you're not capable of it.
Speaker 1: All right, So for the people that are getting confused
in the chat, to put this simply, the words are flexible,
but eventually they come to be pretty consistently an orthodox
theology to mean, and I mean our position to mean
a distinction between nature and person. It's that simple, and
that distinction is necessary to have trinitarian theology and to
have Christology. To have the distinction between nature and person.
The Trinity is necessary for a triad, but it's necessarily
going to reflect into Christology because it's one of the
Holy Trinity who became incarnate, so there's going to be
the same nature person distinction. It's necessary further because it's
not the Trinity that became incarnate. It's one hypostasis of
the Trinity that entered into time and space and became man.
But he never ceases to be God and to be
a divine subject because it's the same subject as before
the incarnation, but he now enters into a mode of being.
Hence you need to have a theology of mode or
in hypostatized where the human nature that he assumed becomes
truly improperly his full humanity. It's not a human subject,
not a human hypostasis, not a human person, not a
human agent. The only subject, person an agent in the
incarnation is the identically same subject, person, and agent prior
to the incarnation. The second person of the Trinity. Thus,
by necessity there's only one divine subject that refutes Nestorianism.
But it also, by extension, refutes the oriental position or
the Coptic position, because it never ceases to be two
natures fully in union. Now here's a point. I think that,
and this will come up later. I don't mean to
get ahead of kai, but I can anticipate. I think
where a lot of people are going to have objections,
and that's well. Now, wait a minute. Doesn't there have
to be some deification or change in the human nature
that the Son of God causes or actualizes when he
becomes incarnate. Yes, there is a deification of the human
nature in the incarnation, and the sixth Council is very
explicit about this. How does that happen? Does it happen
because it creates a tertim quid. No, The essence energy
distinction is crucial as to how the Son of God
deifies the human nature that he assumes. And it is
by his uncreated energies, grace and immortality, those uncreated powers
that the Son of God possesses by nature transform and
deify the flesh to raise it above. As Cyril says,
even the blameless passions that he possessed by will when
he became incarnate, crying, thirsting, et cetera. So when he
was resurrected, when he transfigured that flesh, it really is deified,
but it never ceases to be created. You see, he
never ceases to have a created human nature. Even though
the flesh is deified. The Sixth Council uses the term
of fully deified, it still is created. Thus he retains
the properties of being uncreated in his divinity, created in
his deified humanity. And he still, in that way underwent
no change substantially in his divine essence.
Speaker 2: Yep. And yes we will get to that in the future,
but not on this stream, but definitely that's coming.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't mean to get ahead of you, but
sometimes the Chat has questions that kind of anticipate or
go in that direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, so, Saint Cyril. So just kind of
sum up here is telling us that Christ's heposauticontology never changes.
And since Christ is co extensive with the Sun or
the logos as subject, he does not change onto logically
as a result of incarnating. And that's contrary to both
the historian and Oriental paradigms who treat Christ as a product,
namely like the addition of a human hypostatus.
Speaker 1: This is crucial. This is key because the Fifth Council
condemns the position of Christ's hypostasis as product.
Speaker 2: Yep. Now, in his letter, Saint Cyril equates hippos as
with both usia essence and prosopon at some point, so
we see that within the same letter, how Saint cereally
uses the same word in different senses, and so you
have a potential for word concept fallacy. So you need
it's necessitated to understand the paradigm in order to understand
and dissembusiness.
Speaker 1: Great guy, this is really really key. So I hope
people are understanding this. And the reason I'm cutting you
off again or interrupting is because there was a specific
question super chat that came in about this, and it
was Nick says, for five dollars, why does some Orientals
say that the issue is only terminology. Their theology is
different from what we believe. That's correct.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: Part of it is a terminological issue, but that's only
part of the problem. And you can't sweep this under
the rug as well. We are all just using different
words and meaning the same thing. No. No, it's the
Oriental position that is wedded to words only having one meaning.
And that's precisely why there's such an issue here. Terminologically yep.
Speaker 2: And so we see, Saint Cyril, he is clear Christ
never ceases to be other than his divine hypostatic ontology,
meaning Christ is not composed of an additional human hypostatic ontology,
whether it be self subsistent which is what the historians
hold to, or non self subsistent, which is what the
Orientals hold to. And so metaphysically, what Saint Cyril is
getting at with the hypostatic union that it's not a
union of prosopic ontologies okay, a hypostasis understood in the
sense of person. Any notion of plurality of hypostasis coming
into a natural union has to be paradigmatically understood as
multiple modes of existences or realities pragrama and hypostatization proper
to the respective essences, where each n hypostatization has Christ's
divine hypostatic ontology hypostatic in the prosopic sense as subject. Okay.
And so it's the human idioms that in flesh Christ's
divine hypostasis such that Christ takes on a new mode
of existence without necessitating a human hypostasis in this clopic sense.
Speaker 1: Right, And to answer the guy's question in the chat,
didn't he says, didn't you guys say that a nature
requires a hypostasis? The hypostasis of the human nature is
the hypostasis of the word. That's directly from John Doss. JOHNA.
Mascus says, the humanity has for its hypostasis the hypostasis
of the word.
Speaker 2: Maybe what I can just add to this is the
metaphysical move that the Nestorians and that the Orientals make
is they will say that every nature that is concretized
has to have a hypostasis of that kind. And we're saying, is, well, no,
we don't have to subscribe to that metaphysical move. So
we can allow for Christ to be the hypostatic subject
for the human nature. We want to concretize the human
nature by human hypostasis. We allow Christ's as hypostasis to
be the subject.
Speaker 1: Of This is precisely why Saint Cyril or Leontius of
Jerusalem uses in hypostatized for the human nature. The human
nature is not of itself a hypostasis, but is in hypostatized,
meaning it exists in the mode of the divine person
or the divine hypostasis that assumed it correct.
Speaker 2: So looking quickly at the austore slash oriental paradigm, so
that actually just leads us to what we were just
talking about right now. And so what are some of
the major points how to understand what the historian and
the oriental paradigms are.
Speaker 1: Before you get into this. Let me read a couple
of these real quick, because a lot of people have
been waiting for a while. Brody became a member, Bacon
became a member, Champ became a member. Noah, God's forgive me, honest,
die cast Yemmy, Christopher Scott. They all became members. Christoph Scott.
Since five dollars, thank you, wrongful rage sends ten bucks.
Is my birthday? Here's ten dollars. Enjoy your time, God blessed,
Thank you man. I appreciate that glitchy rhythm sends five
dollars and then rhythm, since another five dollars. My cranium
is expanding here beyond comprehension. Let's go accept this coin.
Many party on weekends. Some learning built different since your
hypocrites became a member for four months, And he says,
I find it ironic that despite the Orientals presenting themselves
as anti historian, they make the exact same moves and
mistakes of confusing person in nature or hypostasis in nature
and go in a different direction exactly. That's why Kai's
doing the presentation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So looking at the paradigms, So for the
Nestorian oriental paradigm, the nature exists only as a concrete
hypostatic ontology and hypostasis. And this here, I'm going to
use the word knuma for the Church of the East
and Syriac it is equivalent in the sense it's an
individuated nature. And this whole thing about the Church of
the East proponents saying, you guys really do not understand
our theology. You don't know what karuma means. I mean,
that's getting worn out. This is when you study the
Church of the East, when you look at what they said,
when you look at the interactions with Saint Cyril, when
you look at the Oriental positions, and you look at
these paradigms, it's quite apparent what you guys mean by knuma. Okay,
so give it a break. Now, the logos is a
concrete divine hypostatic ontology. Every human is its own respective
concrete hypostatic ontology, and that premise there requires, then it
necessitates for both the historians and the Orientals that Christ,
because Christ is a human being, must also have his
own respective concrete hypostatic ontology. Okay, and you saw the
quote from Severus to that effect. And wait until we
get into part five. We're going to get into a
lot more of this. We're going to unravel it a
lot more. Well. In Christ, the divine in human natures
must exist as distinct concrete ontologies in order for Christ
to be fully divine and fully human, and the divine
and human hypostatic ontologies juxtapose in the person or to
use the word prosopone or parsupa in Syriac of Christ.
There is no new separate hypostatic quote unquote unquote christ ontology.
Concretization of the hypostatic ontologies occurs logically prior to this
so called prosopic union. And now here we get kind
of into two branches of where Nestorius would criticize what
he thought Saint Cyril's position is, but it is actually
more along the lines of not Saint Cyril, but what
the Orientals do. And so, now, if the two hypostases
mix concretely, then Christ is an ontological confusion of two
diametrically opposed natures. And Nestorius is right in that. Okay,
he found that to be unacceptable, and we would agree
with Thestorius on that, but that was not Saint Cyril's position.
Another angle is if the two natures first mix in
an abstract sense, and then from this abstract mixture follows
a concrete Christic ontology, then Christ will also be an
ontological confusion of two diametrically opposed natures. And so we
would again agree with Nestorius on that point. But unfortunately
that's not the position of Saint Cyril. Okay, where we
disagree with Nestorius, and this is now where we separate
ourselves from Nestorianism, is this position that we take in
not allowing for dual subject Christology. So Nestorius's metaphysical paradigm
does not allow the divine logos to be the subject
of both the divine and human natures and hypostetizing those
natures or existing in modes proper to divinity and humanity,
and so Nestorius's paradigm is contrary to the orthodox metaphysical paradigm. So,
according to Nestorius, the divine and human natures each must
have their own respective hypostatic ontologies, and as a result,
there is no way to mix the natures without introducing confusion.
But at the expense of not introducing confusion, you have
two subjects. Okay, So that metaphysical move made by both
the Orientals and Nestorians is Nestorians end up with this
dual subject christology. Orientals end up with an ontological mixture
and confusion. Now, since Saint Cyril adhere to a divine
only hippostatic ontology for Christ, Nestorius wrongly accused him of
being an apollinarian, especially given how Saint Cyril uses the
analogy of soul and body for the logos in fleshed.
So now this is a problem for the Orientals. I'm
sure they'll have something that they can babble on about
to give some kind of explanation, but to give an
actual analysis of how is it that Nestorius can accuse
Saint Cyril of apollinarianism? How is that related to a
divine only epostatic ontology for Christ. And so what is
basically the apollinarian heresy. It's basically saying that Christ, the
divine mind, is what replaces the human mind, if you will,
in Christ. So Christ does not have like a human will,
does not have a human It's basically like the body
of Christ is being piloted.
Speaker 1: It's the logos replacing the rational faculty in the human nature.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yes, yeah, and so it's in that sense it's
looking at this divine only hypostasis basically taking over this
human body, so that the human body isn't truly human
in the fullest sense of the word. So if the
stories is going to accuse Saint Cela being a pollenari,
he's conceiving Saint Cyril as basically trying to do something
like that with regards to the and fleshing of the
divine hypostasis.
Speaker 1: Yes, and this is also why Pollinarianism is important in
this dispute because of Pollinaris is guilty of doing a
similar move to both Orientals and the Nestorians, and that
is to reduce a trait of or to identify a
trait of nature as identical to the subject or the person.
So Pollinarianism is a form of confusion, confusing nature and
person as well. It's simply identifying personhood with in this
case the logos, or in the case of humanity, the
humanity is summed up by a human person is identified
with the human soul. And and if there's one subject
in Christ, then he can't have a human soul because
he would be a human person. That's a Pollinaris's reasoning.
So in order to maintain the strict divine subject position,
a Pollinaris thought that he would have to deny the
human soul because that's the defining characteristic of human hypostasis
or a human person. But that's false because the position
that's correct is to say that Christ possesses a human body, mind, soul,
and will, and yet he is not a human person
subject or human hypostasis.
Speaker 2: Correct. Correct the orthodox paradigm just say a few words here. Now,
the Oriental metaphysical paradigm, which as I've already said, is
just fundamentally just a different type of Mystorianism that ultimately
reduces to monophysitism, likewise does not follow Orthodoxy, just as
the Nestorian paradigm does. Not. But now the Orientals they
conceive of what they'll call a non self subsistent human
hypostasis in Christ, and they will use verbiage or an
explanation that they'll say, well, it's inseparable from the divine hypostasis.
It never exists apart from the divine hypostasis. And because
of this inseparability, the Orientals then believe that they don't
count multiple subjects in the sense ontologies in Christ. But
that's just contrary to the metaphysical paradigm of Saint Cyril.
This is them basically trying to count by division. And
so if the two hypostases are undivined or they're inseparable,
we don't increase the ontological count. And now, oh, wait
a minute, hold on a second. I think I'm gonna
see a logical problem with this egg and you're gonna
have to help me out, buddy. So you guys, as Orientals,
you say after the Union, you can't say two. You
have to say one because these hypostasis they're inseparable, right, Okay, Well,
are you gonna say three for trinity? Because wait a minute,
aren't the three divine persons inseparable?
Speaker 1: I was gonna say yeah, all any argument where you
reflexively put this on the trinity, always refuse the Oriental positions.
Speaker 2: No aigan, Please do a stream, Do a six hour stream,
do a twenty four hours, I don't care. Just do
a really long stream and explain to me the logic
how us Orientals you cannot say two after the union,
it has to be one. And your basis for saying
one is that there's inseparability of the hypostasis. So you're
gonna try now this discounting by division, and then you
can still say three for the trinity. But wait a minute,
the three persons are inseparable, so then wouldn't you just
say one? Oh but if you say one, maybe that's
a form of modalism or what would it be.
Speaker 1: Maybe it would just be you know, they will argue.
Some of them will say, well, okay, I'm willing to
sacrifice reflexivity between the incarnation and the Trinity. Are you
sure you want to make that move, because who became
incarnate one of the holy trinities? So like it's just
a really stupid move to say, yeah, then will we
reject reflexivity?
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's it's funny how these Orientals they have so
much faith in again, and they're like debate egga and
do these things. It's like, you guys, you make pathetic arguments.
Let us do our series and we'll just you guys
keep doing your stuff. Whatever. It's a comic show. It's
just anyways. Please do address for me this whole notion
that you guys think you've solved the problem by counting
by division and inseparability, and then how that doesn't affect
the trinity. Yeah, go ahead, do that please. But basically,
so that oriental position, it is contrary to the metaphysical
paradigm of Saint Cyril. And so I quoted what Saint
Cyril was writing in his third letter to Nestorius and
giving you an actual analysis. But if you remember from
the previous dreams, the letter to Emperor Theodosius, he's saying
the same thing. He's presenting the same paradigm. He says,
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
What does it mean for Jesus Christ to be the
same even when he the logos is conceived of in
his incarnate state, he is none other than the divine Creator.
So if you are now changing Christ's ontology to have
this non self subsistent human hypostasis that is inseparable from
the divine hypostasis. So was a human hypostasis the divine Creator.
That doesn't make sense to me. You're gonna have to
again really spend some time and explain to me how
a human hypostasis can be a the divine Creator. I
really need that one explained to me. And then you
look in the Old Testament Malachi three to six. For
I am the Lord, I do not change. I do
not change. What doesn't change I the subject. God is
talking about himself the subject I do not change. You
can replace I with the logos does not change. Christ
does not change. The sun does not change. What does
not change doesn't change the constitution the divine personhood. So
since Saint Cyril's metaphysical paradigm mandates that christ hypostatic ontology
be the same before and after the incarnation, we have
to conclude that christ hypostatic ontological count does not change.
That does not mean that you just invent this insect
parability notion with the non self subsistent human hypostasis and
just say because it's inseparable, we don't increase the ontological
count it's just like saying the Nestorians say, well, because
the human hypostasis in Christ is inseparable from the divine hypostasis,
there's just one person. You guys are leveling the criticism
against Nestorians for trying to do the exact same move
that you guys want to make. You want to allow
it for yourselves, but you want to deny it for
the Nestorians. Well, you're both making the same move, and
we're criticizing both of you for your nonsense. Okay, Christ's
divine hypostasis can take on another mode of existence, the
an hypostatization, without increasing ontological count. Because he remains a
divine hypostasis, his ontology does not increase. And so both
of the Nestorians and the Orientals have the same underlying
nature person collapse metaphysical paradigm which Orthodoxy completely rejects. And
this is why we're saying that in a sense, Orientals
are just a different form of Nestorians. And it's ironic
that it's the Orientals who call us Nestorians. So, according
to scripture, God does not change. Divine actions do not
change God. God can create the world and yet not
undergo any change. Think of how actions that you do
as a human, like walking, raising your arm, moving your head,
you don't change your hypostatic constitution. And so God can
act within creation, form divine activities just the way you
perform human activities, and that does not constitute a change.
The substantive identity of who you are, who God is,
does not change. And nothing can happen to Christ that
changes his hypostatic ontology who Christ is, though he takes
on an additional human mode of being. So Christ incarnates
or if you want to use another the way that
Saint Cyril speaks in fleshes in such a way that
he does not undergo any change in his hypostatic ontology,
because what does Saint Cyril tell us his paradigm is
he's saying that Christ after he incarnates, is what he
was before. So it means the in fleshing occurs in
a way that he does not change. And what is
he not changing in in his hypostatic ontology, So a
human hypostasis is not necessitated in order for Christ to
in flesh his divine hypostasis. That is Saint Cyril's paradigm.
And now this is the last slide, and it's just basically,
what are some of the things or that we consider
as like fundamentals when we're building up a paradigm, how
we are constructing the Orthodox paradigm, how we're looking at
the fathers and how we're they're treating the theology and
what is their paradigm. So we're looking at making a
nature person distinction. So when you're reading, for example, Saint Cyril,
you need to understand that there is this nature person distinction.
There's not a being, there's no collapse between the two.
The person isn't identified with the nature. The person is
not identified with the idioms. And that's where we have
like the natural versus hipostatic properties. There are idioms or
properties that are proper to nature and that are proper
to hypostasis. So for example, and we see this kind
of really get fleshed out by Saint Maximus, where you
will have things like is will a proper? Is that
a property of nature? Or because if now your natural
and hypostatic properties become confused or become synonymous, so then
will becomes a property of the person. That is actually
the case for the Orientals. Will becomes a property of
the person. So now you have three distinct persons in
the godhead, so we will we wills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and let me answer this super chat from Solomon
because it relates to that he says for five dollars
in the debate with Daniel Pikachu, he brought up different
minds as an argument during the Islam Christianity debate on
fresh and fit. What is your response to that? It's
exactly what Kai is getting at right here, which is
that in modern philosophy or in modernity, we tend to
think of a person as a body and a soul,
just an individual. But in Patristic theology based on the trinity,
again there's a distinction between nature and person. That same
distinction between nature and person is reflected not just into Christology,
but also in terms of human anthropology. That's how we
say that Christ is fully human body, mind, soul, will,
but not a human subject and not a human person.
So he assumed a human nature, not a human person.
That's the essence of the council of ephesis in St.
Cyril's teaching. Thus, he's not a dual subject, He's a
single divine subject. So the answer is, although it sounds
a little counterintuitive given the way that we think modernity.
Mind in the Trinity is a property of nature, and
so there's one mind in God, but it's had in
the mode of three persons. So the Father uniquely instantiates
the divine mind, the Son uniquely instantiates the divine mind,
the Spirit uniquely instantiates the divine mind. Yet there is
not three minds. There is one mind uniquely instantiated in
each hypostasis. So mind is a property of nature, and
hence one mind in God, one will in God. When
essence in God, mind is not a personal or hypostatic property,
and it's the same in Christology. That's why in Christ
Incarnate there's two minds, human mind, divine mind, two wills,
human will, divine will, two energies, human will, divine energy.
Why because of two natures.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But if you make the metaphysical move that Nestorians
and Orientals make and always insist that the nature is
through them hypostasis, the concrete existence, it necessitates that nature
person collapse necessitates that your will is a property of
the hypostasis. And there's no way you can get around this,
having three wills in the divine mind, without three wills
in the Godhead, without changing your paradigm. So let the
Orientals flesh that out. Let them answer that question. But
we will get into that when we do part five
and we start looking at Severus, when we start looking
at John Philipponus and how all this stuff plays out,
then you have the essence energies distinction. And so that's
a paradigm fundamental. It basically allows us to discuss how
does God interact with the world. How can God's essence
be above being or be inaccessible to us, yet we
can know God, we can interact with God. This is
very important for asthology. How does Christ interact with his creation?
It's very relevant to the Theophanes. And I think Sam did
something stupid in terms of critiquing the energies and not
realizing how they are fundamental to the Theophanes. H.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And I even said that in one of
those streams.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another one is looking at universals versus particulars. So
nature's in a universal sense versus particular natures or particular hypostasis.
What constitutes a universal is a universal just simply the
some collection of the instantiations. So it just kind of
goes into all of that. The different types of views
you can have, and what is your paradigm consisting of?
And then we have monarchy of the Father, and I
think that is really important. That's really important paradigm. It
is very unique. Orthodoxy is the only one that looks
at monarchy of the father or at least incorporates it
in its purest form.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not doubting you on this, but I've never
actually known or look, what's the Oriental position on that?
Do they differ? How does that relate to this issue?
Speaker 2: So this is okay. So this is the problem with
regards to especially Nestorians in particular, and the the Orientals
would fall into a different, slightly different branch just because
the Nestorians they will take the threefold ontology of the
nature person or sorry, the nature hypostasis person, if you will,
whereas the Orientals don't really take that approach. The Nestorians
they jeopardize monarchy of the Father because of the way
they treat the prosopone as or the parsupa as a
distinct ontology. And so if that's a distinct ontology that
is giftable by the divine logos to the human Jesus,
it makes the parsupa a giftable property that can be
interchanged between a hippostatic substrate or the knuma. And so
then what ends up happening here is is that if
it's a shaable property, you lose the proper identification of
the Father in the Godhead because you can switch because.
Speaker 1: You're just there's not a specific hypostetic property for father,
They're just interchangeable.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the problem that the historians get into, and
the Bye writes about this in his Book of Union.
He is very explicit that the the property the what
we call the keepostatic properties or like the property of paternity,
the property of filiation, and the property of spiration that
distinguishes father, son, and Holy Spirit, those are interchangeable properties,
so that they can be exchanged between the substrates, if
you will, or those concretizations the numa. They can be exchanged.
And so then that what is really existing as a
concrete is confused of who really is the Father, who
really is the son, who is the Holy Spirit?
Speaker 1: Well that's ironic because that's the similar move that Roman
Catholics make when they make relations of opposition. What because
relations of opposition are also interchangeable, and it would relativize
the subjects in the triad which is exactly what you're saying.
The bay By text says right exactly.
Speaker 2: Now. The thing here is the way the historians will
try to counter this, and we'll look at the synods
and we'll look at all of that. In the later streams,
they will try to counter it by saying, well, the
synods of the Church of the East officially adopted Babbeye's Christology,
but they did not adopt his Triadology. So Babbei went
the opposite way. He started with his Christology and worked
his way kind of towards the triadology, and that's the
logical extension of it, and that's how we got into that.
But then they will do what the Orientals do, where
it's like, well we'll allow this for the Christology, but
we'll disallow it for the Triadology, and the Church of
These will say, well, we recognize what we're doing chrystologically,
but we're going to actually take the prosopic properties that
Babbie was talking about that are interchangeable, and we'll just
call them klumic properties. So they're basically shifting it to
be hypostatic properties the way we would do in our scheme.
So they tried. They saw the problem that they would
have with monarchy of the Father, and they try to
make a solution of it by changing their triadology to
not match their christology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got, you know. And another mistake that people
are not understanding that Aagan doesn't get. When he called
in to talk about hipostatized, he thought that the term
means that Maximus teaches that there was a substantial change
in the logos when he became a composite hypostasis. Maximus
is the one that says, quote, he underwent no change.
So it's not a substantial change. First of all, in
the theology of Maximus, it's not what the word unhipostitized means.
It doesn't mean he took the nature in himself to
change it. He underwent no change, but he did in
a sense change and that he added a nature. But
that's not a substantial change, right, So he didn't cease
to be the eternal son of God. He simply added
a human nature to the divine nature that he already possessed,
and ideified that human nature to raise it so that
we could be deified, as the Capadocians say, whatever he
didn't assume is not healed. So that simple principle right
there refutes the the a Pollinarian position because if he
didn't become a rational soul, then he didn't heal our
soul or our reason. So likewise he had to have
full humanity human nature without being a human subject or person.
And that's why only orthodoxeology, I think, really maintains that
balance there. Now on top of that too, well, go ahead,
go ahead, Kai.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just gonna say, I didn't put up
this part in the quotations, but it's interesting in the
third letter that sin Cerel writes two in the stories,
there is actually one part where he's talking to Nestorius
and he's just basically saying how Christ does not morph
into a human form, like he doesn't undergo like this theomorphism.
And at first, you, like, if you're an attentive reader,
you would ask yourself, why in the world would he
be talking to Nestorius about that, because Nestorius nowhere does
he conceive of theomorphism. Nowhere does he say that Christ
changes into becoming a human, from going from divine into human.
So why is Saint Cyril, like, why is he talking
about this? Because if anything, Nestorius is like believes that
quite opposite, the logo stays up in heaven, does not
actually incarnate, does not come into any kind of interaction
with humanity apart from the prosopic union. So where does
this change come from? You will then understand this whole
context of Saint Cyril talking about change in an ontological
substantive way. So he's using that as an explanation and
I should have probably put that into the slides now
that I'm talking about it is how he's giving this
as an ex ample of an ontological change in the
sun in going from divine to human, and that's what
he's negating. And so he's negating any kind of conceptual
substantive change that occurs in Christ. And so you just
go the other way around. You're not going to absorb
some kind of human hypostatic ontology into the divine Christ
is not changing into that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a failure to distinguish between a substantial change
in any change at all, And those are two different things.
When Maximus says no change, that's not a Nestorian position
that there was no real hypostetic union. It means that
the Divinity didn't undergo a change to no longer be divinity.
And only with the energy's doctrine can you maintain the
position that he underwent no change, but also that he
really did deify the humanity. So that's how both things
are true, instead of thinking in these just low tier
either ores, which these people seem to be incapable of
thinking outside of low tier other ores. And also it's
not just a nature person distinction that's necessary for trinitary
theology and for Christology, you also have to have a
theology of mode, and in hypostatize refers to mode. Hypostasis
is a statement about concretized nature or the person or
the subject that has the nature. That's the nature person distinction,
and in hypostatize refers to this other layer or level
of philosophy cult mode that's in metaphysical distinction for the
way a thing exists or how a thing exists. For example,
in the Trinity, the divine nature exists in the mode
of the three persons that possess it. That divine nature
is in hypostatic it exists in the Father of the
Son and Holy Spirit. It doesn't exist outside of it
in some other way, in some other mode. It only
exists in that way in that mode. Likewise, in the incarnation,
the divine nature exists in the mode of the son
of God, who assumes human nature, which is in hypostatized,
exists in the mode of the logos that assumed it. Yep, no, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a confusion there.
Speaker 1: They will confuse the will being a property or being
grounded in nature. And so if we say that will
is a property of essence or nature, they confuse that
with the mode of willing, which is personal hypostatic.
Speaker 2: Well, basically, what agan, he's his mistake that he makes.
He conflates tropos with properties. Okay, And by his logic,
God has to change every single time that he performs
a divine act. So if God creates the world, then
he's changing, while God doesn't change. Activity does not alter substantivity.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: It's like if you take his logic to its natural conclusion,
he's the historian, because then he would require the two
hypostatius to perform different activities in order to not introduce
change into the divinity. Like, it just doesn't It doesn't
make sense. His position is very logical, and he does
not understand our paradigm, and he's trying to critique our
paradigm and his own paradigm is just flawed. As we're
as we're demonstrating, we're only just scratching the surface. Now.
The other thing that's really funny is Jay, you posted
that we're going to be doing this live, and he
immediately has already been Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's in like a few hours. He already put up
his page.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he put up his page that he's going to
be doing a refutation stream. It's like, we haven't even
done our stream and he's gonna go and do this
refutation stream.
Speaker 1: Well, that's why I'm not really interested in the interacting
is that when he came on, he just wanted to
clip to say that he had owned me for his channel.
And so why would I debate somebody who clearly isn't
interested in actually getting at the truth but just sort
of clip forming.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, I mean once to what grow his channel
at your expense kind of thing. But I mean, it's
it's pretty pathetic that the Oriental community pushes him as
if he's this champion for them. I mean, if he's
your champion, like you guys had to wait for somebody
who's like a high school kid who's only been like
part of your community for a couple of years or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this is the same we went We went
through all of this in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen at
Severn Zelot and David and Severn Zelut. It's exact same
play repeating itself, and in five years it'll be some
other dude who's in the next one.
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly, So I mean I already gave eggin the homework.
Please make your streams answering the questions that I've asked
you show, show your logic, show your metaphysics, show your paradigm,
and' let's compare the paradigms. Let's see what kind of
questions you can you can answer, give some meaningful answers
to your worldview, and let us do our series. Okay,
you guys who are saying debate aigan, debate again, debate aigen,
you're going to see that by the time we're finished
this stream, and if you consume their kind of like
counter refutations or whatever, there's nothing of substance to them.
It's all just going to collapse. Okay, you don't scare
us one bit. We're not running. We will take our
time to do this stuff, and we're going to address
this stuff. Okay, we don't play your like Muslim tier games.
Oh come debate me, debate me, debate me. I mean,
if you only put in the amount of effort at
critiquing us that you critique the Muslims, if you only
put that much effort into critiquing the Muslims and Islam,
maybe you wouldn't have been Vimmy's for so long and
love your limitude under Islamic rule and whatnot. So I
mean whatever, just keep watching our streams. I hope this
is a benefit to the Orthodox. We're doing this more
to educate Orthodox people. Orthodox educate the inquirers to just
basically appreciate better what the Orthodox position is, how we
present a coherent metaphysical paradigm worldview. We can give you
the answers to a wider range of questions, theological questions,
and that you can find meaning within Orthodoxy and why
you want to be a Christian.
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Ens since five bucks? How is it the case that
the antio Kines understood Saint Cyrril's paradigm better than his
own students the Alexandrians. Calceadon was twenty years after Ephesis.
It seems like the guys who lost at Ephesus one
at Chalcedon. I don't know if I would say that
they understood it better. Because the Fifth Council reaffirms the
Kuillion reading of Calcledon and rejects the Antioch Keen interpretation
of hypostasis as product glitchy rhythm five dollars. What's the
distinction between something natural and something created? Well, the word
natural is more of a general term. That could mean
the divine nature or it could mean a created nature,
so I would say it that way. Kai is also
the proprietor of Orthodox Shahata. You guys can definitely follow
him over at Orthodox Shaada. I will have him linked afterwards.
You can't tag people in live streams and the titles
for whatever reason, but afterwards I will tag him. But
you can follow him at Orthodox Shata. And if you're
watching this series, the next one, I don't know when
it will be, but what is on the table for
part three?
Speaker 2: So we're still in part two. The second stream of
part two, we're going to go into composite heepostats He's
We're gonna look at the language, We're gonna look at
the terminology, We're gonna look at what exactly means. We're
gonna look at Saint Maximus, We're gonna look at more
of Saint Cyril, and just really understand that language. Because
I even within the Orthodox community, there's a lot of
confusion going around that people are thinking composity pistasis means
a composition of two hypostases coming together.
Speaker 1: And producing something quid or I mean exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So we'll spend some time with that. David,
he wrote a good article. I don't think it was public,
but he wrote a good article of many different ways
of how to understand postases, like if you understand it
this way, this is what it means if you're positing
it this way. So we're gonna go through all of that,
and I really hope for him to be part of
that stream as well, because that's I'm lifting a lot
of it from his work, and so I want him
to be part of that.
Speaker 1: Oh awesome, all right, Well, thank you, Kai, and I
hope everybody is enjoying this series and hopefully most of
your questions will get answered as we work all the
way through. If you're curious, I did add to the
show description part one and part two, so some people
were saying, Worre's part one, Wor's part two. They're all
on the tab under live streams, but I've added them
to the show description so you can go