Speaker 1: S S.
Speaker 2: S S.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. There have there have, there have, there have Yeah.
Speaker 5: The career.
Speaker 2: Success success success success success success.
Speaker 6: Ssss success ss ss.
Speaker 7: S S S S S S S S S S
S S S S.
Speaker 3: S s s s S s s S.
Speaker 7: Second second.
Speaker 8: Second second, second second.
Speaker 9: We've learned so much.
Speaker 10: If you've been on the Jaysonnalysis, right, A lot of
you guys are new, I understand, that's cool. Glad to
have you here, but some of you have been with
me for the long haul. In fact, there are some
who've been with Jays Analysis for ten years, reading it
back in the day, and we've come a long way,
come a long way. All right, Welcome, thank you, glad
to see you all here. I got a room of
almost two hundred nerds. I'm sure the nerds will file
in then we can get up to about three hundred.
Speaker 1: Den I will see.
Speaker 9: You, boy, Jay in the house. You boy can't see me.
Speaker 11: Thanks.
Speaker 8: Boots shoot Shots, boots, Shop boots, shoots and Storm boots, boots,
Stop boots, Stier sun was s.
Speaker 9: All right, welcome and if you can try to avoid
those clicking in the background, David, Yeah, all right, welcome
you are here in another episode of Jay's analysis. Today
we have our good friend, our brother David the real
medwife back. David has delved deeply into the Chalcedonian issue,
the issues of Pope Saint Leo and the so called
Oriental Orthodox. We're going to look at that today. We're
going to get into the topic of how the notion
of hypostasis in nature is part of the confusion. How
there's a development, you could say, in the understanding of
those terms. We're not saying there's a development in doctrine,
but there is a development in which terms will become
precise in our theology over time. And David has done
a lot of research into the actual writings of those
in the opposing camps. And now this is relevant because
there's a lot of a false acumenism in our day
which assumes that, oh, well, all these positions are actually
just the same. We're also in the same stuff, so
there's no reason to fight anymore. And anybody who debates
or fights over these issues is unloving and mean and
has spiritual problems, which would mean that everybody at Chalcedon
was unloving and mean and had spiritual problems, because of
course they were debating these issues, and then for the
next two hundred years, in the next two councils, it's
actually the issues of Christology that get hashed out and debated,
particularly the topics will be discussing today. We're going to
cover a lot of those formative central texts and David
has done what three part series. I think I made
it through at least half or.
Speaker 1: I'm doing great jay this this stream. Some people might
remember that we did the stream on Orientals as well,
it was Florence as well. But what's different, what's going
to be different about this stream is we're going to
be diving more in dept. That stream was kind of
dealing with the common misconceptions. This stream is going to
be explaining pretty much the in depth Christology of Severus
of Antioch, Philuxinus of Madbug, and other Oriental characters. And again,
the reason why I even started doing this is it
didn't sit right with me when I heard so many
people say, oh, you know, for for sixteenth centuries, for
like all this time we were actually believing in the
believing in the same exact belief, but we just had
terminological problems. And I saw a lot of different argumentations
from copts, which made me say, Okay, I'm going to
look into this. I'm going to research and see what
both sides say, and the theology is really not the same.
And when I made the video series, which by the way,
if you want to watch like you can watch in
any order, like if you want to start with part three,
if you want to start with geophysicism in the photos,
that's fine. You don't have to like watch it chronologically.
When I started to upload the videos, one interesting thing
that happened is that various different coptic priests have said
that I don't really understand these issues. They said this
on face, I don't really understand these issues, but none
of them really explained how I don't understand these issues.
And one of them, at least when they were pressed,
they start to explain a little bit, but they showed
that they didn't. They had no idea what they were
talking about. So it really just seemed like, oh, he
doesn't has no idea. He thinks we're different, but we're not.
And just and this was back then, I only uploaded
like the introductory parts. So we're going to be talking about.
Speaker 9: Why are they always arguing? Why are they always arguing
against us, by the way, if what we say is
not different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. A lot of them like the way they act.
A lot of them act like we had many people
that were part the Oriental Communion and we asked them
who they bishop were in the discord server and none
of them really they didn't really want to say it.
So there's a there's a sentiment, especially between a laity
that like, oh, you know, we really are the same,
and the clergy are to they don't care enough to
actually talk about this. Farrington Peter Finks and he says
that he studied this for thirty years, and he says
that we're not different, but we don't accept Alkadon because
they don't say the magic words exactly. So the stuff
that we're going to be talking about is going to
be dealing with the history. We're going to be going
back to even fourteeny eight. I'm planning on giving like
a short summary of what happened, because this is all
going to be very relevant for people to understand what's
going on. As we probably all know, they have a
character calledness Stories In four twenty eight it becomes Patriarch
of Constantinople. He says, stupid stuff like Mary is not
the Mother of God and all that stuff. Saint Curle
starts reading The Fathers, and one interesting thing to note
while he's reading the Fathers is that he comes across
and this is important to note because this explains why
the term mea physics even came into play. Now, of course,
if you watch the first part, we say that we
don't do the word concept fallacy. The concept behind those
words is what matters. So Saint Curle reads certain atonation
letters when in reality they were written by a pollinarius.
And there are various different people that make note of this.
Timothy in his Ecclesiastical History, who's an Apollinarian disciple, says
that the term mea physicis was made by a pollinarius
in order to combat the innovation and heresies of the
Cappadocian fathers and of Saint Antonatius and all these different
people who in their eyes are preaching two natures. So
I think this is kind of important to note. But
he came across this term when he was researching about
the Fathers, and he thought it was generally from Saint Antinasius.
Now today we know that it's not from Saint Antonatius.
It's a pollinarian forgeries, but it's important to note because
this is really how the term comes to play. Then
first council of emphasis happens. There's an historic council that's
a split between Antwerk and Alexandri. This is very important
because two years later, in four twenty three, there's a
formula of reunion. There's a there's a reunion between Alexander
and Antioch, two patriarchates that have different christologies. And one
interesting thing and this is in letter turned nine and
Saint Carrol that's going to be very relevant when we're
talking about Pope Saint Leo is that he says that
we know the theologians make some things of the evangelical
and epostolic teaching about the Lord commonists pertaining to the
one person and other things they divide as the two
natures and attribute the word he wants to God on
account of the divinity of Christ and the lovely ones
on account of his humanity. So this is very relevant
because Pope Saint Louis is the exact same thing in
his tomb, but this is not acceptable for him, and
we're going to get into how they defend this from
Saint Carol, and then Saint Kurle argues against After the reunion,
he argues against Theodore of Mopsuestia and the fifth secure
Medical Council, will we condemn him as a heretic and
he writes on the unity of Christ. He reposes, and
then other stuff happens, so that there's a council in
four forty eight under the presidency of Saint Flavian, he
deposed Utichius, and then a year later Dioscurus says, oh, no,
I have to save him because he doesn't teach. Oh
he was rejected out of a because of Astorianizing patriarchs Ephesis.
The second council happens. Saint Flavian, EBAs Theodore Dominus two
of Antioch are all deposed. A year lady Saint louis excommunicated,
so Dioscurus in one fell swoop just this excommunicating gets
rid of three major patriarchs and other patriarchs as well.
And so this is a big deal, right, This is
a huge issue that's going on, and this context is
important when we're talking about the Council of Kalkadon. And
in four fifty one, the Council of Kalkadon happens and begins.
And on the topic, by the way, j on the
topic of all we believe in the same thing. If
you look at the Troparia, if you look at the
Tropario of Severus from the Coptic liturgy. What's really funny
is that they refer to us as heretics. They refer
to Calkeedonias as heretics. But now today, sixteenth centuries later,
suddenly we believe the same thing, even though in their
liturgy they refer to Calcadonius as heretics. As you think,
this is like absolutely silly. We believe in the same thing,
but apparently we are heretics. How how exactly? But so
what are the oriental problem in the Council of Caltada.
And if you watch the part two of my video
series you will I deal with that with I deal
with that argument extensively. So on one problem they have
is that all you you first said that Christ is
out of two natures, and then you insert into nature's right.
And that's one of the arguments they use to say
that there's a direction going to the way of news
stories because he said the same thing. So this is
an example of word concept fallacy. In here Nestorius used
into natures. Therefore we cannot say into natures. And as
a matter of fact, Severus I believe Saint Justinian uh
cited Severus in saying this. Saint Justinian says that he
makes he makes a point that Severus argues that all
you know, when when the Father spoke of two natures,
that was fine, but then came Nestorius, and now it's
not fine. So Necessarius kind of poisoned the term in
there eyes. And this is a great example of just
the word consp fallacy, genetic fallacy. But the main problem
with the tom of Leo, there's two problems. The one
problem is that Pope Saint Leo talks about forms operating
and seemingly independently in their eyes right, so he speaks
of two forms of Christ, and they think that those
two forms of Christ means two persons. The problem with
that is because Pope Saint Leo has a vested understanding
of christology. Forms mean essence, it doesn't mean hypostasis, it
doesn't mean.
Speaker 9: Any And listen, you see this in Augustine. Augustine does
the same thing in his sections in the City of God,
where he cites the Platonists, he cites God as the
first form, which actually is a mistake in Orthodox theology
of Augustine theology is actually incorrect here, but it shows
it backs up what you're saying, because Augustine is using
form in the sense of essence or nature. And there's
a whole chapter in Brad shows the book on that exactly.
Speaker 1: And and if you want to add, I use this
quote in Michalkadan video Saint Gregor of Nissa. He says,
the human nature does not give new life to Laster,
so that itself. If Saint Leo said this, this will
be deemed as heretical. But this is Saint Gregrif Nissa
against Eunomius that says this. And then there's another quote
from Pope Saint Leu in his tone where they argue, oh,
you know, he asks which nature was on the cross? Well, actually,
Saint Gregri Nissa again and against Eunomius says asks which
form is beaten in the passion and which is glorified
from eternity. So he's talking about the human form, meaning
the human essence was beaten in the passion, which is
exactly the same thing that Pope, Saint Leo says, So
again these are arguments that Orientals use, but the responses
are fairly simple. So again I'm keeping it simple. If
you want the full explanation, you can look at part
two again. So about about letter thirty nine of Saint
Crole Severus and Phililitis. This is text four phil Alitis.
So if you have this is from the Pauline Allen
book on Severus of Antioch. Texts four Severus essentially says,
in his defense of Saint Curle talking about dividing quote
unquote divide in Christ's actions and attributing the divine wants
the divinity, he says that he actually didn't mean it.
I'm not kidding. He says, oh, he didn't mean it.
He just made them anathematized their positions, and then he said, oh,
he just let them praddle on like stupid kids. And
he didn't actually mean it when he said that, which
is again an example of rationalization in our view, and
it has really bad implications on Saint Krole's view. I mean,
if Saint kil didn't really mean what he said, doesn't
that mean that he's fine with nestorianizing ideas. Will't that
imply that he will be fine in Kalkadon because he
didn't mean what he said. Again, this has bad implications
for him. Another big issue they have is that kal
Kadon accepted EBAs and Theodorit, which are two historian sympathizers. Now,
in terms of theodor It, if you actually read his
book Eeronistas, which was composed in four forty seven, there
are numerous things that he says in Aeronistas, which is
actually the things that Saint kill says. I'm not going
to go over them, but you could. But again, I'll
deal with those things and with Ibas. He has a
bad letter about how he doesn't like Saint Kyle, but
he doesn't really speak of theology. Not to mention, his
acceptance was based on a reversal of the Council of
Ephesus too, so it was based on reversing the effects
of the Second Ficiene Council, which kal Kadan was based on.
And not to mention again, his letter where he was
condemning Saint Kilt was written for thirty three, back when
he was a priest, not when he was a bishop,
back when Saint Kyle himself was alive and there's another
example of word concept faucy Jay. They will say a
Hisstorius accepted the Kalakdonian Council. He said, oh, I believe
in the same thing, which is funny. I mentioned this
in the video. Arius does the same thing. It's the
Council of Nicea. Ten years later, yes, he says, I
accept the Council of Nicea.
Speaker 9: So yeah, that was a great point that you made.
I mean, just because someone claims to accept something, that
doesn't mean that the council is therefore erroneous. I mean,
that's a ridiculous argument. And by the way, Basil in
his writings is constantly having to deal with the word
concept fallacy. We deal with it constantly as well, with
idiots like Jonathan Hill, who will say that because the
term natural theology is used in Saint Maximus, therefore he
means natural theology in the tonistic sense, which is ridiculous.
And Bradshaw has entire sections refuting that notion. Again, Father
Stanieloy has entire sections refuting the notion that we believe
in in the tonistic version of natural theology. So again,
word concept fallas he is at the root. It's a
central problem here in this debate with the Nonchalcedonians because
they're married, on the one hand to the phraseology of
Saint Cyril, when Saint Cyril was himself not married to
one definitional sense of this terminology. This is the problem
with all of these heretics and all these people who
don't have any ability to understand nuance is that they
try to squish everything into a one dimensional notion. And
once they do that, in their minds, they think they've
got some kind of key to refuting everyone else, but
it just actually makes them look ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, it's the same Jonathan Hill that sided
it to coptics.
Speaker 9: Right, Yeah, he'll sign with coptics. He'll find anybody who's
in a disagreement with us to try to find common cause,
because he's psychotic by the way, he's bipolar and he's
on meds.
Speaker 1: And not to mention, to prove that Sanco wasn't married
to one phraseology, there's letter fifty three. There's his statement
on Gleffire on the Pentitiic. But letter fifty three is
very insightful because he says Christ is in and out
of two natures. So he says exactly what Pope Saint
Agatos says two centuries later, who also says that Christ
is in and out of two natures, which is affirming
the both formulas. Right, both formulas at Saint curl Usus.
So we're actually not the devices, we're actually accepting the
correct interpretation of both formulas. Really, the main debate is
rejection of the Diophysite formula, which is by the way, patristic.
And this is again as I proved Timothy the student
of Apollinarias himself amidst this and another objection I've seen,
and this is this is a silly objection. The word
hypostatic union was not used in the Council of calcadan
Therefore Calcadonis don't believe in hypostatic union. I mean, can
you really believe this?
Speaker 9: Yeah, this is so many stupid arguments. I mean, it's
like you had some really good comebacks on this point
in your videos. By the way, I think that was
solid argumentation. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it also shows right like the way people
defending Kalkadon, it's not like they didn't appeal to a
certain patriarch. They defended it's on the grounds of its theology,
which is very important now I want to talk about.
This is kind of like the basic issues in the
Coptic Church. I've gone when I'm talking about the responses.
I didn't make up these responses, like I heard these
responses from other Coptic and Oriental Christians. So one response
I've heard is about unleavened bread, and I think you
can explain this as well. So the Armenian Church uses
unleavened bread. The response I got, Jay is that, Oh,
it's merely a jurisdictional preference. It's not that big of
a deal. Can you explain to me, Jay, why that's
why it's not merely a jurisdictional preference, Why it's such
a big deal.
Speaker 9: Well, the ancient Canon's actually forbid doing that, and it
would be a movement back to judaizing. It would be
a movement back to the Old Testament conceptions. That's the
reasoning why in the early Canons it's not that practice
is forbidden. So, and this is exactly why Armenians would
do things like sacrifice the chicken at the door of
the the church on whatever ceremony, because this is a
They're they're tempted with judaizing it. That's why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's another objection I heard the cousin marriages and
the Egyptian Church. The argument I heard was it's merely cultural,
so it's okay. But I heard a good response from
my friend Nick who said marriage is theological right. You
can't separate marriage and just make cultural marriage and theology like,
you can't separate these two. These are two intertwined things.
So it wasn't really enough. But by the way, for
the audience, I mean, these aren't arguments that are like,
they won't really one hundred percent direly prough all this
church is wrong. It just showcases certain problems. We'll get
to the real issues really soon. And it is the
circumcision in the Coptic Church. As a matter of fact,
if you look at Florence Bull of the Union with
the Cops, this is their motivation for seeing that those
that are circumcised are damned because people in the Coptic
Church this circumcision. And as a response, the Roman Catholic
Church said, oh, you know, if you do a circumcision,
you're damned. Bull of the Union with Cops, No.
Speaker 9: I mean this was already condemned, and things like Trollo
and the Canons of Trollo. I mean this is already
was already condemned by us as well, exactly. I mean,
it's just ridiculous. How are you gonna go back to
these practices which the New Testament obviously forbids, the Ancient
Church forbids I mean obviously. And by the way, they
are a Chumenists. This is another point that is often
forgotten is that they will team up with Roman Catholics
against Orthodox. They will team up they all the time. Yeah,
so there, and they don't actually agree amongst themselves, these
oriental communions, but they'll team up against Us with people
who are far worse, like Roman Catholics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see this generally. I've seen multiple apologists just refusing. Now,
to their credit, I've seen certain people, one of them
who I'm debating with, he actually does represent the position
faithfully and he does attack like Roman Catholics as well
Protestants too. But most of the people that I talked to,
they only focus on Orthodox. They don't even talk about
Roman Catholics. They only focus on Orthodox. And this has
to be noted. There's like, really online, there's a lot
of Oriental groups and most of these are like Western converts,
they're most of them are caatic humans. And all they
do is they're just trying to find like inquiries. The
Orthodox Church get them and just bombard them with all
you know, Kalkadon, this is a historian. Here's like, here's this,
this and this. Like you guys are an historian. You
should come to the true Church. And they do this
a lot. But that has to be noted to get
onto the real stuff. This is the this is the
beautiful stuff theology. First, I would like to talk about terminology.
I'm going to dive much deeper into terminology in part one.
I kind of events like very basic. So one thing
we have to make sure, and I will avoid seeing
the word nature as much as I can unless I'm
quoting someone, because for us, nature obviously means essence, right,
it means essence. For them it means hypostasis, and in
some cases it means essence as well, but only in
terms of Trinitarian theology. So in Severus's Letters sixty five,
he says that we use the name nature sometimes generally
of essence and sometimes specifically signifying the hypostasis of a man.
And he goes on so generally speaking, he uses nature
to mean essence in tridology, because the Cappadocians did this,
but in Christology he use a different scheme, he used
a different terminology, so we will be talking about that now.
Of course, hypostasis for them doesn't mean person necessarily, because
there are two types of hypostasis. Itself means a conchritization
of essence, and that's like the antique like Nicee language
that they inherit. There's two types of hypostasis. There's non
self subsistent hypostasis, which is something that a hyperstat that
doesn't exist on its own. So the example of this
will be the body. The body without the soul doesn't exist, right,
so it needs to be in the union with the
soul in order to exist. And the soul in this
example is self subsistent. It exists on its own, so
when it's separated from the body, the soul still exists, right,
so it's self subsistence. So these things are very important
to note, and the body's soul analogy is very important
in dealing with christologies. It's key to this, and there's
a structural similarity for example, and the historians will essentially
say that all hypostasis are self subsistent. So that's why,
like when they're speaking of two natures and two hyper
states and they're trying to make a union out of
two hypostasis, because they are self subsistent, it still leads
to two persons theology. Right, So this is like the
basis of Saint CEUs argumentation is that you can't really
have a single personhood in a union of persons in
a prosopic union. For severs prosopone person will mean self
subsistent hypostasis because it exists on its own, and there's
a very common like so in their critological scheme, Christ
is out of two hypostasis. There's a divine hypostasis, right,
that's self subsistent, and there's a non self substance in
human hypostasis, even though normally a composite human hypostasis is
self subsistent. Because the human humanity of Christ doesn't exist
outside of the union, it's non self subsistent. So it
might this might raise a common question, a very simple question.
So Christ is out of two hypostasis and he's one hypostasis,
and it's doesn't that mean that he changed or doesn't
that mean that there's a fourth person in the trinity.
Actually no, it doesn't lead to.
Speaker 9: Yeah, only if you mistake the notion of what nature
and hypostasis is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the way they will defend it they will say, well,
self subsistence is personhood, right, and so the humanity is
now self subsistent. There's no personhood in his humanity, but
his divinity is where his personhood is because that's self subsistent.
And so that's how they can still defend that Christ
is still a divine person. But there is indeed a
problem with that. And there's two problems. Actually. Number one
is that this kind of subverts triological language. So from
one nature three hypostasis, it becomes one ussi and three
prosopa in order to defend like the divine personhoods in
the trinity. But also remember the soul is self subsistence.
So this is this is something that Josephair talks about
a lot in his book Got issued Out. He asked
this question like three four times in his book, and
he asks, what is you know is soul and hype?
Are they synonymous or are they distinct? The reason why
he's asking against the soul is self subsistent and it's
union with the union with the body, and the soul
will presuppose will mean that the soul will mean the personhood.
So will this lead to a direction of pollinarianism is
an argument that Joseph fairly is and I think if
you are to defend Christ's personhood, Christ's divine personhood, then
necessarily in that same system, it will also lead that
that personhood is a faculty of the soul as well
in that system, and that will lead to some sort
of pollinarianism, not exactly, but but the same mistakes that
pollinarius makes. So this will be like the basic problems
that Sever's faces in Christoche. Do you have anything to add?
Or should I move on?
Speaker 9: Now? You can go ahead, okay.
Speaker 1: So there are also other arguments, some of these I
already used. This one is from the aunties of Jerusalem.
So or the distinct formulas that we have is that
we say the crisis into natures and out of two natures,
out of two natures signifying the singleness of his personhood,
into natures signifying the duality of his essence, duality of
his essence's, duality of his energies, right, duality of his wills.
So these are the two formulas that we use that
are in perfect conjunction with other one another. Now the
Orientals they reject it into Nature's formula. For them, it
is an historian formula because to say into natures, for them,
nature means hypostasis. So that means, oh, you mean into hypostasis.
Someone might ask, well, what if they said nature meant essence.
We will get to that because that actually happens and
we will see how servers responds to that. But there's
a common argument here is if Christ is out of
out of two natures, out of the hypostasis, but he's
not into natures. But at the same time, the natures
are not mixed, and they're not confused, and they're distinct. Right,
So after the Union service will speak of them being
we'll speak a lot prieties. So what propriety is. It's
kind of distinct from property. It's the color of prices,
like eye color is a propriety of the human hypostasis.
Heights eith right, these are like natural qualities.
Speaker 9: Yeah, what what you see here is also similar. I
want to stress too to the tendency of a pollinarianism,
which what a pollinarism and a pollinarianism did was to
mistake characteristics of what are proper to human nature, different
features and faculties or properties of human nature, to mistake
that for what hypostasis is. Hypostasis is also not just
the combination of all of the characteristics of human nature.
So the nature person distinction is crucial here. As Saint
John Damascus says, all heretics result from a failure to
distinguish between nature and person. All of the heresies, all
the trinitarian all the Christological heresies are based on this,
which is based on dialectics. And we're going to see
that dialectical tension in most of these guys that we
talk about, especially Severus with his dialectical usage of Aristotle.
But what I wanted to distress is just that there's
an important distinction between the characteristic properties of a nature
and what a hypostasis is. And this is this mistake
that many many people make, including people in Orthodox circles
as well, who just simply aren't studied on this or
don't know the nuances of this topic. And it's very nuanced.
Speaker 1: So the main argument here from Leontius, I'll cut it short,
is so you say Cristi is out of two natures.
That's fine, that's good. But you say that his natures
are also distinct even after the union, and Severance will say, yes,
of course they're different, right, they're different. Right, his humanity
is different from his divinion. But then the obvious objection
here will be so they are distinct, but doesn't distinction
mean multiplicity. Shouldn't that mean that after the unit there's
still two natures? And this and again if the problem
here is that severis want's unity of nature, unity of
hypostasis out of two hypostasis. But the problem is, again,
if you're going to try to say that they're distinct
even after their synthesis, even after the union, the problem
is distinction implies multiplicity. It doesn't mean imply division. It doesn't.
In there view it does. But in our view we
will say it doesn't imply division. But it still has
to be distinct. And if it is distinct, if it
is distinct, then there needs to be two natures even
in that logic. And this is actually the argument the
Answer to Jerusalem uses in his book against the Monophysites,
where he tries to argue, well, you know, you still
should be arguing for two natures, because this is the
lat logical conclusion and a debates which we will get
on later. But the debates that Servis has with Julian
of holocarnosis is actually very much based on this question.
It's very much based on whether distinction causes multiplicity or not.
There's another proof of service of Antioch, meaning of Sarahciantich
believing that distinction implies division, and that is letter letter two,
Letters twenty two and twenty three. I will focus on
letter letter twenty three in this instance. But he says
in this letter that that there is a holy Trinity
that is divided and distinct in hypostasis, but it is
not divided in one essence. So what he's trying to
say here is that he's really trying to protect the
capitolciin theology. But because he believes distinction implies division and composition,
something we talk about all the time, he has to
say that the hypostasis are divided in the Trinity, and
we won't say that he's willingly being tried to we don't.
I don't think his intention is triteistic, but nevertheless it
may lead to triteism. It does anticipate triteism in his
in his theology, if you actually understand the implications of
the hyposthesis being divided. But but what I wanna, what
I want to focus on again is that for him,
distinction implies division. Now to get onto the debate that
he had with Julian of Holycarnossus. This is very important
because Julian is an Aftartodocetist. He believes that Christ's humanity
was impassable along with his divinity, and he believes that
the natures had a non different difference. So in greet
this withs so he says, oh, you know, the humanity,
they are distinct, but at the same time they're not really.
Speaker 4: And his.
Speaker 1: Argument was that if this his argument, he understood that
the distinction implied division, and he understood in the Severian
system that Christ had distinct conditions. Right in his humanity
he was passable, but in his divinity it's impassable. Right,
So there's two distinct conditions that Christ has, and so
he thinks that, well, this necessarily means that the properties
are divided because they're distinct, and that will lead to
division of natures and persons, which leads to Nestorianism. And
then this is the rationale that Julian has in accusing
Servers of Nestorianism ultimately, because Severus is trying to be
ortholox in his system by saying that Christ is passable
in his humanity. But ultimately Julian actually tries to be
consistent with that system, and he says, no, actually, that
is not possible, because if there's a distinction, that means division,
that means there's a division that means there's a duality
in Christ. That means there are two natures in Christ.
And we can't accept that.
Speaker 2: And so this is.
Speaker 1: An example of a debate that he has. I think
we will get onto that if I'm certain, yes, we
will get onto that debate later when we're talking about energies.
This is text eleven in the Service of Antioch book
by Pauline Allen. This is text eleven, so you can
go read there for yourself. I'm not making this stuff up.
I read the text. I know what they're talking about.
Now there's another debate that is important, and this is
relevant too, into nature's meaning into essences. So there's John
de Gramarian. He is what we will call it Curic Calcadonian.
So he's one of the first curly Caulcadonian theologians in
the scene, and he defends Kalkadon and he he he.
The theology that he proposes is the theology, generally speaking,
that we used today. He's different from the person of
John Philipponos, by the way, who's a different person. They're not.
They both call John de Gramarian, But this John de
Gremarian is not the same as the philosopher John Philipponos.
So this debate is very insightful because John the Gramarian
has a very simple argument. His argument is essentially basically this.
Speaker 3: Look.
Speaker 1: All we did in the Council of Kalkadon is that
we have the Capitolcian trinitarian terminology right where nature means essence,
hypostasis means person. Right, we have this trinitarian terminology with us.
All we did is apply that terminology to Christology. And
so when we say into natures, the only thing we're
really saying is that Christ is into essences. That's really
what we're saying. And so since you too also believe
that Christ is into essences, you uhoually accept Kalkadon. I mean,
the argument is very simple, and this is also vindicated
because we just spoke about this. Sat Leo also form
meaning essence, right, so this vindicates Saint Leo as well.
So Severus has two options here. He either says he
either accepts the argument of John the Grammarian and he says, well,
you know, if it means two essences, then I guess
you guys are right. I guess you guys are really
not that different from us. Or he can reject it.
And as a matter of fact, what he does is
he precisely does that. He precisely rejects into Nature's to
mean into essences. And so this will go to everyone
who thinks that Orientals have the same theology with us.
Severus had the possibility to speak of into essences in Christ,
so basically have vv of the into nature's formula. And
he explicitly rejects this. This is in the third letter
in Against the Grammarian. You can find this also in
the Paulin Allen book on Serrus of Antioch. I believe
this was text. I believe this was text eight, but
don't quote me on that. I'm not one hundred percent
to certain. But there's arguments. Okay, does he come to
the conclusion that into nature's means to a heretical conclusion. Well,
his argument, it shows showcases his inverse order theologist. So
he says, we understand substance, we understand essence to mean
a compendium of hypostasis. So if in Christ two essences
were united, then the problem is that these two abstract
essences were united, meaning that the entirety of the Trinity
and entirety of humanity was incarnated. This is nonsense. So
this is the argument that Serrus gives. The funny thing
about this argument is that Nestorius uses the same exact
argument against Saint curl. Saint Curyle says that God the
Word assumed assumed flesh. Then we find the exact part
this's answers. If God the Word became flesh, then all
the Trinity must have become flesh, since the trinity is
bound together as one nature. So this is the exact argument,
and he means nature to mean essence. He used the
same argument as in the story use did a century ago.
And again this showcase the inverse or the theology, because
they because you can only come to this conclusion that
these abstract essences are united. In our view, if you
start your theology with essence. Now, how now, what will
be our response, What will we say if we came
with this objection, we will say Christ possessed the fullness
of the divine essence, but that doesn't mean that when
he entered into a specific mode of being, that doesn't
mean that the Trinity also entered into that specific mode
of being. So he possesses the fullness of the human essence,
but that doesn't mean that when he does something, when
he in terms of the mode of being the Trinity,
it also goes along the same with humanity. So two
nature's two essences can come into unity, but it doesn't
affect the rest of the hypostasis in the sense that
the rest of the hype states don't become hyposthetically incarnated
with Christ. But this is a very i think, very
basic level mistake that Service makes, and again not many
people really talk about this. And this is the one
chance that anti Koncaddians had in trying to understand orteology,
and they completely rejected this. And so for all the
humanists on both sides, this completely on both sides, This
completely refutes the project that some people are trying to go.
Do you have any comments, Jay, or should I move
on to a mistake service makes about humanity being an energy.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean again, we're going to see the constant
pattern of mistaking and characteristical properties of nature. So for us, body, mind, soul, will,
and energy is the signifier or operation proper to a
certain nature. So when a nature acts, we can know
it by its energy. St Basils. So, for example, when
Basil argues for the full divinity of the spirit, he
does so on the basis of the fact that the
spirit has the same uncreated energy as the Father and
the Son. Anybody who's read Basil's works knows that that
was a central key argument as to how he proved
the full divinity of the spirit. So we're going to
see this same pattern and Epizzol thirty eight at Basil,
I would add, is very crucial to understand. I'm not
just saying for you before this whole debate, because it's
Saint Basil and the Cappadocians who will take us in
the direction that the later fathers at Chalcedon at Ephesus
it should be at Ephysis Calcedon, and constant num one
and two it should be two and three. They will
build on this theology. So our theology is going in
a consistent direction, where nature person will, the properties of
nature that apply to human nature, body, mind, soul will,
those terms will become very precise and cons In archeology,
energy will be very consistent. Right, Basil will argue the
same thing against Eunomius. I just want to stress that
for us, the Cappadocians are crucial here, and I think
that it's it's very important that even though Severus and
certain people will cite the Cave dooceans, I don't think
that they really do them justice. And some of the
Orientals even seem to question the cave doceans, don't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a I'm not going to name the website,
but there's an Oriental website that refers to like heresies
to be refuted. And one of the here sees that
we have is essence energy's distinction, So they think that
essence entity. Like, there's one website that is coming up
that's a coptic website refers to essenti's distinction as heretical.
So yeah, there are some people that do that. A
response I got that was good is apparently Severus in
some instances does apparently distinguish essence and energies. But we
will actually get something relevant to that later like right now.
But again, the significance of this debate that he had
with John de Gramarion is that a lot of the
arguments John de Gramayon used was really talking about the
Cappadocian fathers, right. He used the Cappadocian fathers and used
him in a Calcadonian way in order to debate against Severus.
And I think I don't know if it's this letter
or a previous letter against John de Gramarion, but I
think Severus refers to him as a as a Nestorian
atheist Jew. I don't remember like what exact terminology he used,
but he like threw a lot of insults to John
de Gramaryan. So this wasn't actually just like a minor
dispute that he had, Like he was very passionate about
these theological differences. He said that he said that John
Gramarian was an Ammonite that was foreign to the laws
of Israel, basically implying that like his church is Israel.
Speaker 2: Right, So.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like he's very like this isn't just something
that like Severis wasn't like, oh, you know, this is
what I think, but I might be wrong. No, this
is something that I really do believe. And if and
if we have a different point of view, then you're
in history in eighties Jew and I really hate you.
Like this is the kind of view he has for this.
So he's very adamant on protecting protecting this view, which
the same we cannot say for the Coptics today, the
same we cannot say for some Ecumenists, even in the
Orthodox camp today, in this regard, we can't I at least,
even though he's referring to art side, I at least
admire the passion he has for his beliefs in that sense,
because I wish I saw that passionate other people, but
instead we see ecumenism. But speaking of Severis, there's an
interesting part in God History Dialectic. This is in well,
this is in the volume one PDF. I don't know
if the pages are different in the in the book itself,
but this is in page two twenty three. He just
Ferrell says that Severus used the term energy in two senses, right,
So he does have a doction of energies, one as
the source of act activity or operation, and two when
he explains how the humanity itself is understood to be
the operational energy of the deity within the incarnation. So
to vindicate this, there are three sections. I'm going to
read only one of them, but there's three sections in
Severus's letter. One. This is to Ecumenicus where he actually
says this. So this is letter one to Ecumenicus Severus
of Antioch. He says that if then the Word changed,
the manhood which he had hypostatic united to him, not
into his nature, for he remained at which he was,
but into his glory and operation, and things which manifestly
belong to the flesh have come to belong to the
Word in himself. How shall we allow that each of
the forms performs its own acts. So he's referring to
the tone of THEO obviously, but again three instances in
the first letter he says the same thing, like, how
the humanity is the operation or energy of the deity
with an incarnation. So in the next page Pharaoh says
two to the four. This entails two disturbing implications. Number one,
is humanity energy of the deity of Christ in the
sense of the actual process of the deities operation? Why
extension is creation itself therefore God's energy, and therefore did
God have to create as occurred in the originst problem?
Or this is the second point is the humanity? But
the object of the operation of the deity. Does the
humanity not become, to use Servers's own words, a piece
of wood or flint to be pushed about here and there,
or to use Saint Augustine's words, a lump to be
moved about by God from one state to another? As such?
Does God will it each and every moment to be
fearful in his humanity? Et cetera, and et cetera. And
then we will get on to this later. Actually about
this and how this, how Pharaoh actually makes a good
case about this? And is this not capable of being
understood in doucty sense? In this regard one must recall
it several speaks of operation energy as the eruption of
the will. Does one arise at the classical amounophysid form
of one energy, one will, which has two sets of manifestations.
This is crucial because a lot of people make this mistake.
We will get to this more in debt, But a
lot of people will see, like diotelite statements from severus
and they will think that, oh, that means he believes
in two wills. Well not actually, because in all of
those statements he talks about it being displayed as two wills. So,
for example, a statement I've heard severus says is that
in the Crucifixion Christ displays two wills in sulvafic suffering,
and a lot of people use that to say, oh,
look we are diotelites. Well, actually, he says displays. That's
the key word. He displays. There's two manifestations of the
one divine human tandric will. And again we will get
to this very much in detail, how this exactly happens,
which will actually get to now exactly if you have
anything to add, we will get to services theology and
how the Oriental theology leads to mono energies monotelicism. This
is the contrast even began.
Speaker 9: Right, This is the key thing to understand that the
track of this debate goes in a certain way. So
it's really difficult to try to dive into this issue
and try to understand it or discuss it if you
don't have the right entrance point, right, if you don't
have the right place to come into the debate. If
you come into debate at the time of Calcedon, you
won't know that this moves into the subject of two
energies and two wills. And this is why I say
Maximus will be so so crucial, because Maximus will have
a dispute with peis that I've talked about many times,
and we're actually going to do a whole talk on
this book. As I promised a long time ago. I
just forgot about it. And what we're going to see
is that there's a dialectic at work in the tension
between There's an assumed natural tension on the part of
people like Severus, between the human will and the divine will,
whether in Man or in Christ. It's just assume that
there's going to be some natural tenson. You actually see
that natural tension in Augustine as well. So I want
to stress to everybody the place to start on this topic.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 9: It is relevant if you do want to get into
these topics, If you just dive in at Calston, it's
going to be difficult, it's going to be confusing. So,
of course, as we have recommended for many years, one
of the great places to start is the dispute when
the story is Saint Alexander and the Christological controversy of
the John McGucken book, and then we have I would recommend,
especially the Bradshaw book, because the latter chapters of the
Bradshaw Book are actually going to show the Augustinian underlying
assumptions of simplicity that will not only underlie the Western
Latin tradition of the Triad and their errors on the
Trinity and the Philly Oquay, but it's actually going to
explain the Western notion of form and essence and simplicity,
and this conditions the Christology. This is so important to
understand is that the essence energy issue is not just
about the Triad. It's crucially about Christology. And this comes
to the forefront of the debate at the sixth Council.
So when Saint Maximus argues this against Puris the Monothelite,
who is the outworking of this metaphysicite Oriental sense of
the term right, because we can understand metaphysis in an
Orthodox way. By the time that it's being debated in
Maximus's day Sat Maximus's day, the debate becomes about the
natural tension between the human will and energy and the
divine and so the debate, a lot of it will
be about in this book Christ saying let this cup
pass from me, and this will lead eventually to the
denial of the gnomic will. So Christ not possessing a
gnomic will necessitates that he's a strictly speaking, divine hypostasis
who possesses a divine in human nature. Right, there's no
created hypostasis in Christ, because if you possess a created hypostasis,
the most likely there would be some notion of a
gnomic will. But the argument is often made that he
doesn't possess a gnomic will because he's a divine person.
So the neo cyrillic defense is what wins out after
the Calcedonian debates. So there's two three centuries afterwards of
debate after Chalcidon as to what these terms in these
words mean. And again, the solution to all of this,
in my view, all this stuff, with the debates with
the Orientals, is just simply understanding the consistent patterns of
how we understand those words. It's beginning to be crystallized
in the times of Athanaceous and into the Cappadocians. I'm
not saying it wasn't true before that. It's just beginning
to be crystallized as to what hypostasis means, as to
what hypostatized means. It's particularly Leonchious of Jerusalem who really
codifies in the Karellian sense, the notion of what in
hypostatized means. And that's why this comes to dominate after
that period, right after the time of Leonchius into the
Six Council. The confession of Saint Sophronius is all saying
what we say, right, So that's how we get to
this notion that Christ possesses two wills two energies because
energy is as Saint John Damascus all the way back
to the Cappadians, Energy signifies the type of nature. If
Christ possesses a human and divine nature, then he has
to always possess two wills and two energies, even though
they're not intension, they're always in symphonia. They're working together
in Christ. That's the Orthodox view. So the human will
is deified by the divine will and energy, as the
Fifth and Six Council specify. As exposition of Orthodox Faithbook
three specifies, Christ communicates to his humanity the divine glories
of the uncreated energies. That means it raises and deifies
as human nature, but it doesn't lose its natural properties.
So there's always a human created aspect to Christ. Even
though it's deified. It's never destroyed, it's never divided, it's
never absolved. It always retains its natural properties even though
it's deified. So when Jesus is resurrected, it's the same
body that he had before he was resurrected, but it's deified.
So in the same way, this is the model not
just for Christology, it's the model for the essence, energy distinction,
how God relates to and interacts with the world. It's
the basis for Maximus's logos logi doctrine, right, because the
logi interpenetrate all reality. They are the bases of all
created reality, being the patterns and ideas and archetypes in
the divine mind in the logos. That's why all things
are made through the logos. Again, the logi or uncreated energies,
and the same thing is going to be applied here
in Christology, in the debate between the wills and the natures. Right,
there's a balance here, there's a synergy here, and everything
that David's telling you comes to the forefront in this
dispute with puis all the stuff that I just said
about the logi, the uncreated energy, that's all in this
debate right here. That's the whole locus of this debate.
This is what's cited at the sixth Council when Pope
Saint Agatha's his letter about Christ possessing two wills and
two energies, when San Sophronius writes his letter about Christ
possessing two wills and two energies. This book here is
the source for this. So what David is going to
tell you right now is crucial to the solution of
this whole issue. Yep.
Speaker 1: Because what I'm going to be talking about now, as
John of Pephesus, who is also to my knowledge also
part of the anti Calcadonian team, he says that Severus Philoxenus,
these people are really the creators of the monoty that movement.
So an objection that we hear genuinely is that a
Pires was a Calcadonian. He's your problem. That's like a
Muslim saying like arianism is your problem. I mean, it
doesn't really make any sense. It's a problem for us
because monotilitism is wrong. But in their theology many of
their fathers actually teach that. But again I can feel
for the anti calocus in the sense of, well, how
like can you demonstrate how it is monotilaw is, how
it is monel energies right, actually precisely, if that's what
we're going to be doing right now. So I'm going
to start with a quote from Severus in his Harmon
one hundred and twenty five. He says that hypostasis does
not deny Genus or Ussi or abold the shit, but
it sets apart and limits in particular icons the one
who subsists. Now, what does this really mean if you're
talking about Ceverus's system And I also talked about this
in the first stream. He believes that reality exists in
three planes. So there's a trinitarian realm, there is the
intelligible realm, the realm of the angels, right, and then
there's a material world that we inhabit in right now.
So it's key to understand that for him, like the
unity of the hypostasis of Christ, it's not like two
material substances that are mixed. Right, they each operate in
their own reality. They're in synthesis, which is what we
will also say it is a synthesis. Saint Kill himself
says that the union is a synthesis. So in that
point we agree it Severus that there is a synthesis.
But because of his system, which is based on Plato,
based on Platonism, and he's trying to basically christianize that system,
I will say like he's attempting to at least christianize
the system, unlike like trying to hellenizing it. But the
problem is that in his system, these two natures, these
two hypostasis, they operate in their own realms. So the
vills operate in their own reality. So the divine will,
the way it operates, it operates in the trinitarian realm.
The problem here is is that CEUs himself says, I
believe in hormily which one is eighty one. I believe
harmily eighty one, where he talks about that the human
will is an iconic representation of the divine will, just
as the body is the iconic representation of the soul.
So there's a synonymity here. So right, just like how
the soul animates the body, so does the divine will
animate the human will. And this is precisely what we
mean by monoetulit in severus, it is the divinevill that
animates the human will and gives it life. It's it's
because that the human will is non self subsistent. It
needs the divine will in order to exist, just like
how the human hypostasis is non self subsistent. It requires
the divine hypostasis in order to exist. So this applies
to energies, and it also applies to the wills. And
if you can, and if you if you're not convinced,
you might say, ah, you know, that seems like a
different argument. Well, let's hear from Severus himself. This is
from text twenty six, his letter to John de Huguminos.
He says that and he quotes from Saint Dionistius areopaguide, which, again,
to be fair to Severus, he is quoting these people,
and he considers Saint Dionistius as an authentic apostle. So
to his credit, he tries to be patristic, and he
tries to be logical with the Kappadocins. But here's what
he says. He says that, as we have already written,
this is to John the Hegumenus text twenty six of
the Service of Antioch book from Paul and Allen, as
we have already written extensively in other writings, we have
understood and understand the statement of the old Holy Deonist
Hystereopa Guide, who says, when God became human, he performed
for us a new divine human tantric activity as meaning
one composite activity. But this is what this, here is
what he says that we will disagree with heavily. So
so far it's good, but then he says, in our
eyes it cannot be understood other than as a rejection
of every duality. So here he is very obviously saying
that we don't accept the duality of wills. And there's
also numerous quotations that we have that we will get
to where he believes that separate civil So this is
this obviously strongly implies that Service rejects dietelicism, and this
is his basis right. The tom of Leo was actually
very crucial in the six Segumentical Council because precisely it
spoke of two forms of operating, and two bills and
two energies operating. And this is actually very this is
the main part that he disagrees. So he disagrees with
the tom of Leo not because of the two forms,
but because the two forms have their own energies, have
their own operations and their own wills. So this is
from against Julian. This is text thirteen in the pauland
Allen book, when when he's responding to Julian of Holycarnassus
who says that Christ has a non different difference, right,
he says, so, so Julian accuses servers of believing in
two properties. Right, He said, oh, you believe in two properties,
you believe in two natures, you believe in two operations
and all that stuff. You're like the Calcedonians. And Sarah's
response in reply to these things, we shall say, in short,
one simple true word. Show us that we have written
somewhere that Christ exists in two natures and into properties.
But you cannot say so, for in every place each
person discovers that our loveliness and anatomatizes those who divide
the one Christ and the duplication of natures and after
operations and their properties. Right, So notice how he talks
about dividing the Christ into two operations in the duplication
of operations of the natures. And this also, this statement
is very crucial because he also implies again in a
duplication of natures. Remember, for him, nature's hypostasis in a
duplication of natures and of their operations and their properties.
Now what's the problem. So for him, hypostasis is where
energy and will resides. But there's a very simple objection
to that. And you we talked about numerous times if
if energy was proper to hypostasis, then they triteism, right exactly.
So again this theology in another sense, we can show,
we can see that this theology kind of leads to so.
Speaker 9: I mean typically the Orientals to reply to them, I mean,
they just have to divide, they have to reject that.
Uh that predicating back right into the triad, that there's
a that there's a similarity between uh, nature, person and
will and the triad and the way that nature, person
and will function in anthropology and christology.
Speaker 1: Right, yep, Uh, I missed that kind of job. I'm
sorry this is going to be yir, but I missed that.
Can you repeat that again, I missed that do they?
Speaker 9: So You've interacted with a lot of those guys one
on one more than I have, And I'm asking a
question in terms I've wrote the theology that we're talking about,
but I'm not interacted with a lot of these guys
in terms of like debates and discussions. What I'm asking
is is that do they? I mean, it seems to
me that they would have to deny that there is
a reading back or reflexive predication between the triad and Christology.
In other words, wouldn't they just have to say, well,
in the triad, it's not that way. We have one
will in God, one energy, three hypostases, but in terms
of the incarnation it's not that way. It's different.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Usually when I or like my friends who got
the whole got these arguments from me, like when they
make these arguments against Orientals, they they literally do not
give an answer, which is very strange. So one instance
that was pretty funny is that a friend of mine
we're talking about, like, you know, why do you why
do you reject duality in Christ and and and the Oriental?
He replied with, well, duality presupposes separation, right because there's
a distinction here. And then my friend obviously went on
to say, well, but the persons in the trinity are distinct,
does that mean the Trinity is divided? Not Actually severe
says yes in the sense of hypostasis, but he literally
got no answers from that. So yeah, there is there
is like different applications of Christology and Trinitarian theology. It's
kind of like double theology in that sense. And so far,
I haven't really gotten any responses because usually again and
most of these people, they will adamantly try to make
their position the same as ours, right, they will try
to adamantly be diotelites, even though as you can see,
their father's reject diotelitism. I mean, he says there is
no duality in Christ. Theandric will right. So the synthetic
bill is one. So I haven't really heard any proper responses,
and you're gonna have a hard time hearing a proper
response usually because either they don't know of these things
this is pretty like high level or actually that's pretty
much most of the reason, or they just want to
pretend to be like us. So that these are the
main problems that occur in these debates. I'll continue on
with some of the quotations of Servius. This is Serius
letter forty seven. He says, considering the general benefit of
a union of the Holy churches and demanding an open
anatom of the things done as Kulcadon against the Orthodox
faith and of the wicked tom of Leo, and of
those who speak of two natures after the union, and
the operations of these and their properties.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So again, obviously he's not referring to two natures after
the union, as to me in essence, right. If he
meant that, then that will be even worse, because then
he will be Utichian. But he means nature's nature to
be hypostasis here, and the operations of the hypostasis of
these and their properties. There's another example, letter thirty nine.
I'm not going to read the entire thing, Actually, I wiel.
It's also a man who accepts the right confession of
the edict if it is enough for him, and he
does not add the exact words which remove the heresy,
opens the door to impiety through the ambiguity of the
written words, and falls under the synthesis of the Holy
gregory in that he is doing detriment to the truth.
But if besides the edict, he both confesses one incarrtent
nature of God the Word and anathematizes those who speak
of two natures after the union, and the operations and
properties of these, and all the impiety that was confirmed
with Kalkadon. He has removed the danger that is expected
from the ambiguity. So this is letter thirty nine. Another
this is the final letter that I will read. This
is his letter to Ecumenicus, Letter one. Accordingly, good doctrine
is contained an end of the Syrian king. For it
anathematizes those who divide the one son who has hyperstack
united to flesh, into two natures, and the operations and
properties of the same two natures. So again this is
the main difference that they have with the tom of Leo.
It's not really about nature per se, about the energy's
bills and all that jazz. That's really the real difference here.
Speaker 9: Human will becomes an iconic representation of the divine will,
and it's subjected to it. There's a dialectical definition of
will and choice here. This is a critique that for
all makes in the section on energy will an agency
in the and the point there is to say once
again that this whole position is predicated on dialectics. There
has to be some natural tension between created and uncreated,
between human will and divine will, between grace and nature.
Speaker 1: And we will talk exactly about that. So that's enough
about Servius for now. I will introduce Pix Sinnes of
Madbuck into this. So he was a bishop of modern
day Montbisch. He was a contemporary of Severus of Antioch,
and he's a huge deal. So if the vest has
Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, and Thomas Aquinas as their faces,
then Orientals, at least in their mind, their faces will
be Saint Kirol of Alexandria, Severus of Antioch, and Philix
Cinnus of Mabock. They will be like the faces of
Oriental theology. The thing about Felix Sennus of Madboch is
his theology is even more explicitly heretical. So if you
look at page sixty eight and sixty nine in the
book Three Monophysite Christologies, Seras of Fantic, filix Is of
Mabig and Jacobo Sarug. This book was written by ROBERTA. Chestnut,
Page sixty eight and sixty nine. Felix Senda says, Felixids
believes in materialism, so he preaches materialism. He believes that
the body is the densest, the soul is lighter, and
God is the lightest being of false so he believes
in some form of materialism. Having made that, note what
he says in hormily in harmony twelve, he believes that
the body and the soul have two vills at war
with each other. So this is the body soul right,
human body and soul. So the body has a has
a vill and the soul has a will. And this
raised an obvious question, right, how is it that we
have one vill as human beings? Then if body and
the soul has a vill and they are involved with
each other, well, it's dialectics of opposition. The vills are
in a synthetic union where they battle over each other.
And if the body then right, if the bodily vill wins,
it's adultery. If the soul wins, it's a good union.
And this isn't harmonly twelve of Philoxenus of Mambog. He
also goes on to say that the bodily will doesn't
merely lust after food or sexual satisfaction or any of that.
This is not what the body will is. It's literally
about everything about the world. So philosophy, science, rationality, argumentation, debates.
These are all lusts of the body. They're all part
of the bodyvill and the soul lusts after the things
of the spirit. Right, So for the spiritual realm, this
is what the So it's like the soul is like
this hyper pietistic, and the body is this like I
will always debate it like this crazy debate maniac guy.
If we were if we were personifying these two bodybuil
body soulvills and these two as Philoxenis himself says, I
post I told either screenshot Jay if you're showing that.
In Harly ten eleven and twelve, he consistently says that
the body and the soul are by nature opposed to
each other. So by nature they're opposed to each other,
according to Philix Sinus of mad Bog, So this is
how humanity is from. And again, why are we talking
about body and soul? Well, it deals with anthropology, but
it also deals with Christ himself, right, it also deals
with this also applies to Christ himself and his body
and his soul. Now, some people might say, oh, you know,
this is too far. We don't we reject that. Okay,
they'll say this is too far, we don't agree with everything.
Philoxin says, well, that's a problem because Severus and philox
Sinnus were good friends. They knew each other, they knew
what they believed, they knew each other. So we will
say philox Innes doesn't have he doesn't have a different christology.
He compliments. I will say Severus's Christology, because as I said,
they're both in the same team. They both they both
very well know each other. But to repeat on the
on the on the human will, on how the human
will is formed. Again, the human will is synthetically formed,
just like how the divine and human will are synthetically formed.
We call this the tiandric vill and these are in
opposition with each other. And just like that, the divine
will and the human will are also by nature in
opposition to one another. There's an example. So there's an
example of Service of Antioch where he speaks of again
Christ displaying two wills in sulif excepting He then goes
on to say that that Christ, in his humanity, was
very fearful and Philix Sinistan's service both agree that he
was more fearful than a normal human. Bul right, he
was incredibly fearful, but at the same time he had
divine courage. And what Saint Maximus will say in response
to this is that fear and courage are both human emotions, right,
So there these both pertain to the human will of Christ.
They're not in dialectical tension, right. The human will wasn't
scared and the divine will was. We'll say, oh, you
know whatever, it's fine. There wasn't any tension like that
between those two. But in their view, in the Oriental view,
there is a tension. And what's really important again, this
will is synthetic, just like how christ will is synthetic.
A huge implication, and we can see from Servius himself
and most likely Filoxcentus, they both reject epicatus stasis, and
that's obviously because they want to follow the fathers, right,
so we can credit them for that. They're trying to
remain orthodox. But the problem is in their theology. If
the divine will in Christ animated the human will, then
how is it that in the recapitulation, how is it
that Christ is not gonna animate or human wills. Again,
how is it that because in Christ the human will
was subsumed and was dominated by the divine will, then
that logically follows the same should be happening in the Esctan. Therefore,
universalism should actually be true. Isn't that truth? Shouldn't In
the Oriental view, universalism be the consistent theological truth instead
of whatever version of apricateastasis they have. So someone Stephen
barstud Highly even takes this one step further and he
says that and he's a heretic according to the Oriental position,
but his view is very interesting because I think it's
logically consistent. He says that not only will we all
be said, but we will all be consubstantial with God himself.
So again, this position is heretical in the Oriental Church.
So this is not an attack against Oriental churche. But
I'm just saying that this is what logically should follow
if you have this doctrine of phils, this is what
should be happening. Because if, again, if in Christ, the
divine will dominates the human will, then who's to say
the same won't be happening to us. That's why we
have a synergy of the human and divine wills. We
don't have an opposition, because the moment you have an opposition,
there are many different theological problems that come out of that.
So that's Wold. And if you look at Jacob of Saruk,
just a small chapter on him on Hills, he himself
like he absolutely believes that there's one nature of one veil,
one energy. Like he's very open about that. And he's
a saint in the Truth is an important scene, not
theologically speaking, but as a general saint, he is very
important in the communion. So do you have anything to
add about Vill's j.
Speaker 9: Because that will be that it's important to understand that
the movement and action and property will can't be defined
after the fall a post Lapsarian doctrine of a defining
free will. It's part of what affects the western Augustinian definition.
So you don't have an Augustine, for example, any notion
of the ability to choose between multiple goods. And this
actually comes into the debate with the Monothelites in terms
of Paris and the way that Saint Maximus will debate
with heroes. He'll actually make the argument that if there's
only one sense that we are directing our gaze towards,
then the originistic definition of free will being defined as
a choice between good and evil is by necessity married
to the notion of turning the gaze away from the one,
the essence of the One. This is another reason why
we can't hold to the beatific vision. So this is
absolutely connected to what we're talking about in terms of Christology,
because in the Esketon, we're not just staring into the
beatific vision of the essence of God. That's why the
Eastern fathers nowhere teach this. They teach that we see,
as Saint Maximus says, the many things around God in
the Esketon the vision of God, and the Esketon is
the vision of the uncreated logie, and so that's a
direct experience of God. But it's also the ability to
retain free will. How do we retain free will if
there's no evil? Because evil? Free will is not defined
dialectically between a choice of good and evil. That's only
characteristic of the fallen state. When we're not in the
fallen state anymore, there's the ability to chew use and
to move the will as a choice between multiple goods,
and so all of the church fathers will define free
will as the ability to make choices this thing or
that thing. But if there's only the essence of God,
then you can't potentially or possibly actually choose or will
anything other than the essence of God. This is very
crucial because absolute define simplicity is not just a doctrine
of denying the essence synergy distinction, and also applies to Christology.
It makes Christology impossible. It leads to the dialectical tension
in people like Severus in the way that they define simplicity.
Severus will actually use the neoplatonic definition of what simplicity
is when he talks about what these natures are in themselves,
and so he makes them reducible into one dimensional categories
in terms of what nature is or is supposed to be,
especially in the incarnation. And so this has an effect
on one's doctrine of free will and choice. And so
in the Esketon, all those positions that believe in the
beatific vision in the Roman Catholic Latin sense, they all
deny free will. In the Escaton redefine it to say, well,
your will is truly free now because you don't make choices,
you only choose the essence of God. That's a complete rejection,
in denial of what all the church fathers taught free
will was. Did Christ possess free will when he was incarnate?
Of course he did. Did he only will one thing?
Did he only will the essence of God? I mean,
it's ridiculous, right, No, Christ, just as God can can
freely will to do different things. God freely chose to
create the world. Christ freely walked around and willed to
do what he did, and he freely willed in both
of his natures right, the human will and will were
freely operating.
Speaker 1: Sorry I interrupted you, ja, but I was gonna I
was gonna add. The oriental response to this, The oriental
view will be that since God is good, like he's
marebely good, then there is no kind of like there
is free will. But because God is good, the feeble
aspect is only in the human wild, if that makes sense.
In contrast to like how they will view this, this
builds question mm hmm, go ahead, all right, I'll go ahead.
I guess in this I think I dealt with wills.
I want to kind of talk about to move on.
I want to move on to Phillixinus's eucharistic problems. I
mentioned this in the first stream as well with Jay.
So there are two. So Christ, for Philoxinus exists as
God by nature and as a man by miracle. So
there's like two different modes of existences. There's a miraculous
existence that that he exists out by the virtue of
his will and his natural existence as God. Now this
is relevant because this goes into the eucharistic theology. And
so as an example I used is, let's say that
you're an atheist and you're anti Caan Church, and phillix
Sinus is right there like looking at you, and you
take the Euchrist. Your atheist, you don't believe in anything,
but you somehow manage to take the Eucharist, and you
come back to Philixinus and you're like, hey, I took
the Euchrist and you said that I was. You guys
say that I was going to get that, but nothing
happened to me. And philix sins will respond to that, well, yes,
because you don't have faith. You don't have faith, so
the way you observe the Euchrist, that's just mere bread
and wine. But if you had faith. Right, the mode
which the Euchrist will exist via those who have faith
is that it will really be the body and blood
of Christ. Now, this in a sense makes some sense,
but the problem is that if you apply this to
Christ then there are some problems. Right. For example, if
you don't have faith, then is Christ God? And this
kind of makes people make enables a question to be
asked to philixins and leads to certain rabbit holes. That's
pilix Sinnis himself will reject, but his understanding of being
by nature and being by faith, and there's kind of
two levels, two modes of being, enables problematic conclusions. So
the argument I'm making here is that if the Euchrist
changes depending on how you view the Eucharist, then naturally,
by that logic, Christ should be changing depending on how
you view Christ. Right, So if you look at the
Euchrist without faith, obviously Philoxenus will say, well, obviously as
bread and wine. But if you have faith, that will
be the body blood of Christ. So if Christ was
in front of us, will Christ will be? Will he
be a mere human being? If I didn't have faith? Well,
this this is some kind of like a relativistic understanding
of reality and to finance. This is kind of like
the end. But I would like to talk about Jacob
of sarug who's by the way to a as a
small as side. He is in the two thousand and
four Roman Martyrology, so he's a saint in the Latin
rights as well. So good job in Roman Catholics. But
and he's an anticocatoon right, he wasn't in communion with
Orthodox Church. So there's some really problematic things that Jacob says.
I'm going to list some of them in Harmony fifty three.
He says that the disciples ask Jesus. He's talking about Judas, right,
the disciples ask Jesus, who has gone out of the
sphere of the sphere of the light of our Lord
to go and mix with the darkness in a great,
great movement. So there are multiple senses in mixture is used.
And most of the time, if you're talking about philoxiniesen Severus,
when they speak of a mixture, they don't mean it
in a heterodox sense, right, They don't really mean it
in a heterodox sense. It's they're limited by their own terminology.
But Jacob, in that sense, when he's speaking of Judas's
essence mixing with the darkness. He is first of all,
saying that evil has a real existence, that it's not
a mere privation, but it actually exists. But at the
same time, Judas is essence mixed with evil, and that's
and this is actually a Gnostic idea that Jacob uses.
And as a matter of fact, like I'm not going
to talk about every single nasticizing thing that Jacob says,
but if you read the book ROBERTA. Chestnuts Treatment off
side Christologist Severus of Antioch, Felixus of madbook Jacob of Sarrug,
if you read the section about Jacob of Surug, there's
many different things that are nasticizing. Does that mean that
he is gnostic? I don't think he is by intention,
but the stuff that he says has a lot of
gnostic messagery. So he refers to Christ, he refers to
the Mother of God, to Mary as as some sort
of an envelope, like he's some sort of like a
sacred secret envelope that is hidden from people and these
small minor gnostic teams. Again, so I won't say that
he's gnostic theologically speaking, but there's another.
Speaker 9: Thing that he says as it Severus or Jacob Jacob.
Speaker 1: I don't think Jacob is intentionally being gnostic, but a
lot of the teams that he talks about is definitely
like I think.
Speaker 9: I mean, the crazy part about Severus that struck me
was the discussions about the uh, the unknowability of the
Father and that you have to have this sort of
ascent in Christ.
Speaker 7: And then this is the.
Speaker 9: Neoplotonic doctrine of a cent actually of emanation everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in Letters sixty five he actually talks about how
the sun is. I believe this is cited in the
Chestnut book as well. In Letters sixty five, Syrus talks
about how Christ is the object of the contemplation of
the Father. So there's some aspect of logos theology here,
like world logos theology. But it's also the same thing
that Arian said, right, I mean, and a lot of
gnostics said to justify the createdness of Christ again, and yeah,
that team also exists in Serius, and again it's in
Letters sixty five. Very it's it's a long letter where
he deals with multiple questions. Some of them are triological questions,
some of them are dealing with theopaschism. Some of them
are dealing with other theological stuff. But I believe in
the first part he kind of talks about that that
Christ is the object of the contemplation of that. Does it?
Don't the Roman Catholic say the same thing? Or am
I wrong? Good day?
Speaker 9: How did you phrase it? Say it again?
Speaker 1: The Chestnut book speaks of Christ being the object of
the contemplation of the Father, so he is the object
of Father's contemplation.
Speaker 9: Sometimes that's in some of the logos apologist speak this way.
I think Tretoline speaks that way there. Some of that
could be in the Cappa Docians off the top of
my head, but yeah, we have I have to look
at the actual texts. But it depends. So maybe not
that terminology itself, because you could find and some of that,
and the early apologists will make usage of that, but
then they sort of make a lot of mistakes. People
like tation and people like that, So we have to
be really careful that or have to see the exact
the way that they do appropriate the psychological analogy of
mind and will the father mind will breath. This kind
of stuff is pretty common even in the Eastern Fathers
but the problem is that they still couch it within
the context of Orthodox theology and Christology, whereas in Roman Catholicism,
or in what we're seeing here, because you get a
and oftentimes a smushing of nature into person, of properties
into essence, of energy into essence. That's where it starts
to become problematic because now we're getting we're confusing the
energies of the Godhead with the persons. Right, So the
Spirit is the love of God in a strict identity.
You see, the logos is quite literally the reason of
the Father and not the manifestation of the reason of
the Godhead. Because reason, if we're talking to the divine
mind here. Okay, mind is a property of nature. So
all three hypostases possess the divine mind. So the Son,
in a unique mode manifest He manifests in his unique
mode the mind of God, as does the Spirit, and
as does the Father. But we wouldn't identify the logos
with the mind of God in a strict identification. Does
that make sense? So you see the same problem here
is just once again in a lot of these errors
and heresies, whether it's Roman Catholics and whether it's these
guys the mistake is to reduce essences or natures, or
beings or persons to their properties or to their faculties.
Speaker 1: All right, And the final thing that I was going
to add is is about another concept that Jacob speaks.
This is very interesting because he says, I believe thiss.
In Hobbily one twenty five, he says, before the created things,
the father sealed the image of his son, and ford
formed him and showed how he will shine among the
earthly beings. The father looked at the image of his
son and formed Adam. Because of this, he said, he said,
let us make man in our image, in this image
of the child of Mary, the only begone. So we
will say that we have made an image of God.
But Jacob actually Harmly hundred and twenty five is saying
that we're made in the image of Christ. We particularly
made the image of the incarnate Christ. So God sees
the future, sees the Christ, and sees Christ in the
future and forms your image based on him. And I
would say this is interesting, but it also denies that
we're made in the image of the triune grad. So
this has a huge problem in the theologist. Jacob and
I will say this all of this stuff will be
pretty hard for me to recap. But all of this
stuff is pretty much what I had to talk about today,
unless you have something else to add in, something else
that you want me to talk about, which we can
or if we could go to the super chants. What
do you say, Jay?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I want to remind you by that if you
want more on this, you can subscribe to David's channel.
He has a really extensive analysis in his most recent
three part series of these issues. I would again stress that,
so if you do have Got History Dialectic, Volume one,
this discussion of what we're talking about takes place on
about page two twenty five, roughly up to the end
of the book, where he talks about these faculties and
these energies and these wills being in opposition. But that
is a pretty advanced approach if you're new to this topic.
I want to stress that the place to begin the
Christological debates, I wouldn't even say jump to Pope Saint
Leo's tome. It helps to have this in your mind.
This is the best introduction to the issues and the
debates within the storia is because Arianism and Astorianism kick
off the problems that David is talking about, right, because
it's Cyril who will use the miaphysis formula, which we
would read in an orthodox way to mean not a
denial of the retaining of the two properties of the
two natures. I would also recommend after the Syrial book,
or you could start with this one, please read the
Bradshaw book if you really want to get into these
topics and read the whole book. Don't read the first
half of it just about Aristotle, because he will get
up into the conclusions of these issues, all the way
into Augustine and into Aquinas and the contrasting of Palamas
and Aquinas, and the contrasting of Saint Maximus in terms
of the logos and the logi, and how that's not
the same thing as what you get in the Latin tradition.
Bradshaw one of the authorities on these topics, right, He's
everything you've ever heard me say is really just echoing
what Bradshaw has said. And Bradshaw is going to vindicate
all the stuff that David just said. Now he's not
talking about the oriental issues. But what I'm trying to
tell you is that the philosophical assumptions that underlie the
debate of all the Orientals in the Monophysite blah blah blah,
all that stuff up into the Mono Thelites and the
Mono Innergists is the same philosophical assumptions that this book
is about, all the way up into Severus. So these
are crucial texts. They're very key. And if you read
these texts and you understand them, I highly recommend it.
Please read the David Bradshaw book. The Frail book is great,
but it's a little more advanced, right, And if you
don't want to go into that, just read the Dispute
with Purists. You'll see all the stuff that you've heard
me say for all these years, all this stuff I
constantly repeat. I mean, it's all right here. I'm not
making this stuff up. I mean, David, let me ask
you a question. So a year ago, when you and
I started interacting a lot on my discord and we
were having a lot of these discussions. I'm not just
trying to tellt myself, but I wanted to get your
account of this. Now that you have doved, dived, diven,
you've jumped into this issue for the last year, would
you say that you see the symphony of the topics
that I originally was arguing with you, not that you
were disagreeing, but trying to explain to you a year ago.
Does it not seem to cohere? Do the issues not
make sense? Does it not? Does it not make sense?
Speaker 1: Now? Obviously it does. I mean one of the first
I could give you an example when it came to
the essence and ES's distinction. A mistake I made, for example,
is that I looked at like the issue so much
how to mine essence energies distinction the fathers. But once
you read the Fathers, for example, the principle, you talk
a lot about distinction, not meaning composition or division. I
see it in any like in Christology regularly right as
opposed to the things you talk about or the things
that the Orthodox Church fathers talk about. I don't see that,
for example, intomism. I don't see any toomism in the
Church Fathers. I do see a lot of the stuff
that you told me you were talking about.
Speaker 9: Yeah, there's a whole section in here about how the
logi are not the same thing as Augustine's exemplars, and
Augustine's exemplar doctrine passes directly into Thomas Aquinas. Yes, Thomas
Aquinas has differences with Augustine on the doctrine of illumination.
They have two different notions of divine illumination. It doesn't
really matter because the Doctor of simplicity is exactly the
same and so therefore the exemplar doctrine of the Latin
Church is not the same thing as the Logi doctrine,
and so therefore natural theology in the Tomistic sense is
not and cannot be the Orthodox position.
Speaker 1: Exactly. And what I was going to add, but I
wanted to thank you, David.
Speaker 9: So let's now that you've dived into these issues, would
you agree Where would you start if you wanted to
really research the topic, Like what have you found to
be the most kind of beneficial, advantageous.
Speaker 1: Works and in regards to Oriental like Anticulcidonian theology, Okay,
in terms of disputing like in terms of disputes, obviously,
start with the Father and McCain book. That's what I
started with. After reading that, I think I read God
History Dialected to get more scope, but it's kind of unrelated.
A lot of arguments that I got is from God
History Dialected. But I will say, it depends on what
you're worried about. So for example, if you want to
if you're worried about specific points, like in my case,
when I start to understand Orthodox theology a lot more,
what I did, for example, is that I looked into
certain characters like Theodore It of Cyrus. For example, I
read Ernistus by Theodore It of Cyrus, and that really
helped me a lot, because I saw the things that
Saint kill said in him, and it really helped me
a lot. If you want like direct, if you want
diaphysicism in the Church Fathers and this currently Calcadonian argumentation,
I will recommend you to check out Leonti's of Jerusalems
against them onoph Sizes. I did a book review of
that in part three of the of the video series.
If you want to understand sever in theology like what
Servus himself says, I think you can go to first
hand sources if you understand the terminology. So the best
book you can get is that Robert the Chestnut book
The trem on off site Christologies. You can get Serrus
of Antioch book on Servius of Antioch by Paulin Allen.
If you want to read him directly. If you want
to read about the Council of Kalkadon, I would have
said the Defense of the Kalkadon the Defense of the
Council of Calculu in the East by Patrick Gray will
be great. The problem is there's only like three books
available online and the cheapest one is like seventy seven dollars,
so I don't think that's possible. That's why I'm probably
going to try the book review of that sometime. But
if you want to read about the Counts of Calculu,
you can read the Acts of the Council of Kalkadon.
And oh yeah, there's also I didn't read it yet,
but I think The Byzantine Christ by Demetrius Patrellos is
also relevant to this basically any any if you look
at my announcement stream, I cite all of the books
that I read and I will be using in in
the in the future, in the future videos I will
be making, which I made like all of them basically
right now, including this one. Those books are what you
should be looking for, I think, and it's very important
to understand these clearly Culcadonian theology and theological theological points
because it will help, It will actually change the debate
for you. For me, the first time I heard arguments,
I thought they meant nature is is Ussia, and that's
what I kind of I was kind of complacent. I
was like, oh, you know, it's so silly that they
will believe that Cristi is only divide haha. And then
understanding these things, understand this debate, help me really get
the debate. And that's the best thing you can do,
because many people, except for me and Jay, I think
like they won't really be helpful in this regard. There
you will either hear like arguments that are that are
straw men that don't represent the oriental position will or
you will hear arguments saying, oh, be actually believe the
same thing. So basically two groups of people that don't
really understand what's going on will say all of this stuff.
And so the books that I mentioned in parts here,
ultimately you should read all of them, I think, but
if you want in order, if you're like completely, if
you don't have any knowledge, the Alexandra book by far
John McGuckin is great. And then I will say for me,
I mean the Goddess to Dialectic book was really it
wasn't as advanced as I think it will be. I
kind of understood a lot of this stuff, but maybe
that's because I kind of expected some of the stuff
to be said there, old lady. But I think that
will also like, because if you don't understand general Christology,
you're going to have a very hard time read getting
some of the arguments that many for Saints make. Now
let's say, yes, book would be great.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I would say if you want a introduction to
the bigger picture here, And I'm thinking about doing a
lecture just on this because I found my old notes.
I took about one hundred pages of notes ten years
ago on multiple works that relate to this topic. So
I actually have a whole folder here. It's just nothing
but my one hundred pages of notes that I took
on the Pelicon series. The Pelicon series is great, so
it covers we're mainly only concerned with like the first
you know, thousand years and then into the Middle Ages,
so we're not really concerned with modern Protestantism in modern theology.
The two in this it's a five volume series, but
the first three of the Pelicons that are really good.
So I think in the near future. We will also
do an analysis from one hundred pages of notes I took.
And then if somebody wants another, let's say I had
another introductory Yeah, another introductory book to these topics is
also Pelican's Christianity and Classical Culture, right, And so yes,
he will talk a lot about natural law. He will
talk a lot about the principles of nature, as does
Saint Maximus. But does that mean the same thing as Thomism, right,
So no, it's not word concept fallacy. So if you
want maybe a broader perspective to start with these topics,
these are the books that I would recommend. And then,
of course, don't forget the Saint Justinian himself has a
great work on the person of Christ.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's actually a good point.
Speaker 9: So those are all are all good. And then let's
look at some of the super chats that.
Speaker 7: We have here.
Speaker 9: I got stacks of books falling over here. All right,
let's see we've got a few here. Robert Taylor five dollars,
not the previous Robert Taylor, the different Robert Taylor. I
read the Hoffman's Cult Renaissance Church of Rome, and he
complements orthodox ecclesiology and iconography yeah, well, this is the
ecclesiology and iconography of the first millennium is what you
see in the Seventh Ecumenical Council. So actually, if you
read the Sonoticon of Orthodoxy, it's a great refutation of
seeing how the Roman Catholic Church canonically departed from what
we have in the Seventh Synod. And again, somebody should
find out if Uniates affirm the Sonoticon, because that would
be another great argument if I can find this out.
If Uniates do affirm the Sonoticon of Orthodoxy from the
Seventh Synod, then yeah, that's just one of many, many
Roman Catholic contradictions. But yes, I do think occult Renaissance
stretch of Rome showed me a lot of things that
I missed about the Renaissance. So it's a really good
analysis of the second millennium. His severe lack, of course,
is not knowing about the first millennium, as is unfortunately
the case with many Roman Catholics. So he says blessed Lin,
and he is citing the book saying Rome defected in
the thirteenth century. Yeah. I mean, you could have different
arguments as to exactly where to pinpoint the date, because
it's more of a long flowering of a movement all
the way back to the time of Augustine. Again, I'm
really I'm tired of debating this issue. So read the
Bradshaw book. The chapter on Augustine is really good. It
just really solidifies it in a just a really clear
way in a brief chapter. So we shouldn't have to
keep debating these topics. It's pretty easy to understand if
you read these works. But so there's a development. It's
not necessarily we're not saying Gustin is evil. He made
some mistakes, as did Saint Gregor Nissa other people. Saint
Maximus correct mistakes and errors that sing Gregor Nissa made,
So there's nothing wrong with us. We don't follow one dude.
We follow the consensum, consensus, patrum right consensus of the fathers.
So I would say, go easy, don't rush into these topics,
take your time, it'll become evident. And yes, there is
a good historical critique of the Renaissance in that book.
Franklin Chan nineteen ninety nine. Thank you for all your work, Jay,
and thank you for your great guest.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 9: Yes, David has done a tremendous amount of work he
has learned at a lightning speed the last year on
these topics. So definitely subscribe to David's channel down there
and you will get some based solid Christology there and
hopefully we can have I think David wants to. Is
trying to get a debate going?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 9: Are you trying to get a debate with somebody?
Speaker 1: Yes, I just got a debate. If it's a person
on Twitter seven Zella's will be debating on Bright Saturday,
on Bright's Week. I decided to debate him because he
represents the position very well and I think he knows
his stuff, unlike many of the people in my part
two I said, I declared a debate to Farrington, but
on Facebook he said stupid stuff like, oh, I studied
this stuff for thirty years and we believe in the
same thing. So I'm not taking seriously if he's going
to say stuff like that. But yeah, I'll have a
debate in two months about this exact issue, so tune
in for that. It's going to be great, all right.
Speaker 9: EML says for ten dollars, Thank you, by the way,
Franklin for that. I'm much appreciated. mL says for ten dollars.
In the disputation with Puis, I think it's paragraph four
Maximus claims that the distinctions in Christ are effectively virtual.
I don't have book in front of me, but I've
struggled with that. Well, this is just similar to the
notion that that we've talked about in the past, with
Saint Cyril saying the same thing. He's just echoing. And
this is a response to people who think that because
you make a distinction, that therefore it's a division. So again,
remember the dictum that making distinctions does not entail composition
or division. Sometimes a distinction might entail composition. For example,
we make a distinction between body and soul and humans.
In humans, body and soul is composite. Right, It is
a composite thing because it's a creation that is brought
together when God creates us. Right, we have a body,
we have a soul, and so in humans, though in
the way that we actually are, it's uniteed. Right, the
body suffuses the soul, the soul suffuses the body. In
the argumentation of many of the Church fathers. So when
we talk about making a distinction, right, and we say
that it's a virtual distinction, that doesn't mean that the
distinction isn't also real. It's in the context of in
theology making the distinction, right. Saint John Damascus makes the
same argument in the Exposition of Orthodox Faith, where he
says that just because we make a virtual distinction does
not mean that we make a division. It also doesn't
mean that there isn't a real distinction. Right, So you
can say both that there's a virtual distinction and a
real distinction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Can I add something on that show.
Speaker 9: I'm gonna pull up the paragraph that he that he's mentioning,
but go ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. This is relevant with Saint Curle when he's
talking about like the two nature into Nature's formula being acceptable.
So for Saint Kurle, for example, if you make a
distinction in concrete, it leads to Nestorianism because you're making
a concrete distinction and you're separating them, right, And so
he says that we make this distinction in according to
the eyes of the soul. Now, this doesn't mean a
mere conceptual distinction inside our heads. This is still based
on reality, but it is the wavy understanding distinction is
what is highlighted here, and this is exactly what the
Kalcadonian definition. Boy, it does when they say that Christ
is into natures, it says according to the intellect, which
is exactly what Saint Chrios is in his second letter
to Seqensis. So again, this claimed that Kalkadon believes in
this story in theology is patently false. It's absolutely yeah.
Speaker 9: I mean, if you couldn't make distinctions after the incarnation,
which is what some of them argue, then you couldn't
have John Damascus having a whole chapter explaining what happens
in the descent of Christ into Hades, because he makes
all of these very precise distinctions about how the human
soul was severed from the human body and descended into Hades. Right,
Does that mean that he's dividing Christ? Of course not.
Is it a virtual distinction yes? Is it also a
real distinction, yes, So we don't have to set up
either oars as if there's only one or the others.
So I'll read one eighty four. Different actions have different effects,
not on one effect, as was demonstrated by the example
the sword being hardened by fire. If the operation of
the sword and that fire are mutually united. And yet
we observe that the fire's effect is burning the iron,
and the irons effect is cutting, even though they are
not distinguished in the burning cut or in the cutting burn,
just as the effect of heaven or earth. Then it
is not possible to say that there is one work
unless there is only one action. If thou has maintained
that the effect of one energy is several distinction distinct
works by Christ, then thou must maintain one action. Or
if thout is teach an innumerable number of actions, then
thou must also teach that the energies are innumerable. But
our inquiry is not about the works, whether we're discussing
things external to Christ, but about things within Christ himself.
That is to say, about the natural principles of the
essences of Christ, whether he remained defective from the union
or not. If he was defective, then it is possible
for a nature that is defective in a natural energy
to genuinely exist. If it is not defective, then the
energy is either understood to be a component or a
principle of the essence, or it is acquired from those
things external to him. If the energy is proper to
nature and it's not acquired from external sources, then it
is possible for nature to exist, then as possible either
for a nature that exists without actions or the converse
to be true. Nature can neither be conceived nor can
exist without energies proper to it. To believe this is
to believe that He operates in each nature naturally, and
that there are not natures that are altered thereby. So
I don't see unless it's in a footnote, it's not
one eighty four. But again just because don't think in
either ors. Just because he says there's a dis like
we would say that there's a nature person distinction in God. Right,
Does that mean we're dividing God because we make a
distinction between nature and person? No, And so after the incarnation,
can we still make conceptual distinctions about Christ? Absolutely? Does
the fact that there's conceptual distinctions mean that he's blended
in a monofsite sense and that there aren't two nature? Still? No,
because the union is hypostatic, it's hyposthetized. So hopefully that's helpful.
Let's see. But if you want to put in the chat,
because it's not one eighty four, if you want to
pick out the specific paragraph that you that you think
it might be in where you're talking about. I can
read that paragraph telegram five bucks. Can you set your
telegram to public? It's on private, nobody can find it,
including potential people interested in orthodoxy. Yeah, I'll have to
do that. I didn't realize it was private, So I'll
look in there and figure out how.
Speaker 5: To do that.
Speaker 9: All right, So those are the super chats. I don't
see if we got any more. We didn't have surprised
we didn't have orientals in here, like making arguments and claims.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I kind of expected then. But maybe they'll do
it on Facebook.
Speaker 9: Yeah, people nobody wants people. Yeah, people won't directly debate
or interact everything. Everything that has to do everything in
some sort of like passive aggressive shooting from the you know,
behind the screen. Like they won't just ever have a
full on discussion or debate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of people offerate. That's why I decided
to do the debate, because I said, you know, this
is the only guy that does it, so I might
as well give him a chance and we'll I'll have
a debate about this topic in two months. Hopefully I'll
get a better performance. I'll give it the best performance
I can give during a debate. It's been a while
since I did that, but shamelessly plugging myself in here again.
If you like this stuff, if you want to see
more of it, you can always follow my channel. You
can again, if you're interested about Kolkada but you're not
really interested about diaphysicism in the Church Fathers, you can.
You don't have to watch the videos in a chronological order.
You can watch it anytime in any like. If you
want to watch part three first and then part two
and then part one, that's fine. That's fine. So yeah,
that's all I have to say. I think awesome.
Speaker 9: All right, thank you guys. We'll have another stream tonight.
Our friend Mark Hackard is coming back. We haven't talked
to Mark in a long time, and he's put out
some pretty bomb articles lately. One of them is out
on the Jeff stein Efry stuff. So we're gonna be
discussing that tonight, Espionage geopolitics with the expert Russia analyst
Mark Hackard, geopolitical commentator analysts. You've seen him on art
and other sites Sold the East and Mark is also
putting out a new article as well on the controversial
issue of Uribezmanov. How do we understand and take the
off sided. Uri Bezumanov talks, Well, we're gonna be looking
at that, We're gonna be looking at defectors, espionage, geopolitics
tonight when Mark Hackard joins me to discuss those topics.
And but you know, we're just crazy conspiracy theorists here.
We don't actually interview experts, people with graduate degrees in
these topics. You know, I didn't just write my master's thesis,
most of it on this topic. No, we're all just
crazy conspiracy theorists. We don't actually know what we're talking about.
There's no such thing as conspiracy. There's no espionage, there's
no I think none of this actually relates to the
Orthodox world, even though now everybody knows it in relationship
to the Ukraine. In that situation, it's all fake, it's
not real, it doesn't exist, and we're just crazy conspiracy theorists, crazies. Well,
we're gonna get crazy tonight with Mark Hackard, So join
me tonight. I think about let's see eight or nine
Central somewhere in there. I'll have the show page up
here in a little bit. But thank you David, much
appreciate it. Thank you Jay all right, Everybody, have a
good night.