Do you affirm the fundamentals?

[Erik Nelson]

I am not really sure what to say Eric. I think the Chalcedonian Definition is a much clearer position and easier to understand. I don't know If I agree or disagree with you, and I am not a fan of over-simplification but there seems to be a surfeit of complexity in what you present. The issues addressed at Chalcedon had a lot to do with Monophysitism, which you have not really addressed (that I can see) and sometime later stemming from it Monothelitism. Nestorianism was anathematised at Ephesus some years before, so I am not sure why that seems to be much of the substance of what you write. I also note that the Chalcedonian definition is probably a little advanced to be part of the fundamentals.

To my current best understanding...

The Church of the East (CotE) adopted Nestorian dyo-physitism. They tried to "dis-entangle" Jesus Christ into separate human & Divine natures. But that denies the wondrous action of God's Word in generating, crafting & shaping the Christ-child within Mary's womb. Because Jesus Christ, although composed of human flesh, was God-crafted from conception (e.g. John 1:14), having always been under powerful Divine Influences at all times & stages of development and life, such that Jesus Christ never had any existence apart from, or in isolation from, those Divine Influences. Jesus Christ was always "bathed" in powerful Divine Presence from the womb onwards. His human nature was always in "close" union with Divine Nature.

Nestorius demoted Jesus Christ's unique-in-human-history (John 1:14) Incarnation (by God's Word & Holy Spirit) down to mere Inspiration (by Holy Spirit alone). So, Nestorius implicitly denied the miraculous generating capacity of the Word (in the Incarnation). And so, he thereby denied the miraculous re-generating capacity of the Word (at the Resurrection).


Meanwhile, the Oriental Orthodox Church "went the other way". Only some of their most vocal & extreme members actually adopted flavors of full-fledged mono-physitism, all of which essentially view Jesus Christ as a mere "zombie-like mortal body shell" (my words), with no or negligible human thinking capacity & will, dominated utterly by the Divine Nature of God's Word & Divine Will. But that seems incompatible with Luke 22:42, "not my will, but Thine Will be done", which clearly shows a fully human nature having to pray intensely in order to accept & submit to Divine Will.

Most OOC adopted the much more moderate, and nearly Orthodox, doctrine of mia-physitism:

Mia-physitism is a Christological formula holding that in the person of Jesus Christ, divine nature and human nature are united (μία, mia - "one" or "unity") in a compound nature ("physis"), the two being united without separation, without mixture, without confusion and without alteration [ = Chalcedon]...

[They] adhered to a wording of Cyril of Alexandria, the chief opponent of Nestorianism, who had spoken of the "one (mia) nature of the Word of God incarnate" (μία φύσις τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου σεσαρκωμένη mía phýsis toû theoû lógou sesarkōménē)...

[Note] the distinction between the emphatic masculine form Mono and the less emphatic feminine form Mia. The distinction of this stance was that the incarnate Christ has one nature, but that nature is still of both a divine character and a human character, and retains all the characteristics of both.​

The OOC holds that the person Jesus Christ represents "one merged hybrid human-Divine nature" which admittedly "inherits" all of the prior characteristics of both. Such still seems somewhat incompatible with Luke 22:42, which suggests a stronger tension between the human & Divine natures than even moderate mia-physitism appears to permit.

Cyril of Alexandria, universally acknowledged Orthodox, did in fact write the words "mia-physis", meaning "one united [hybrid] nature". The distinction between that and the Chalcedonian "dyo-physis" (two natures) in one "hypo-stasis" (under-standing), seems extremely fine, and does not appear to imply any ultimate denial of the Incarnation or Resurrection.

 

[Radagast]

The Church of the East (CotE) adopted Nestorian dyo-physitism. They tried to "dis-entangle" Jesus Christ into separate human & Divine natures. But that denies the wondrous action of God's Word in generating, crafting & shaping the Christ-child within Mary's womb. Because Jesus Christ, although composed of human flesh, was God-crafted from conception (e.g. John 1:14), having always been under powerful Divine Influences at all times & stages of development and life, such that Jesus Christ never had any existence apart from, or in isolation from, those Divine Influences. Jesus Christ was always "bathed" in powerful Divine Presence from the womb onwards. His human nature was always in "close" union with Divine Nature.

I must say I don't 100% understand what you're saying, but you seem to have your own unique theory of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and you come perilously close to denying Christ's full humanity.

As a Nicene Chalcedonian, I think I'll stick with what I know.

 

[Erik Nelson]

I can't agree with that aspect; the Resurrection was an instantaneous miracle, like the raising of Lazarus.

Yeah, maybe... That's an important comparison...

Lazarus had died of natural causes... His body wasn't all beat up from abuse, crucifixion, and stabbing by a spear...

And, of course, the Tomb was closed, nobody saw inside for probably about 40 hours...

But, I wasn't there, I didn't have a CCTV camera or camera-bot in the tomb.

Logically, we could both agree on words to the effect of "not more than 40 hours" ?

 

[Erik Nelson]

I must say I don't 100% understand what you're saying, but you seem to have your own unique theory of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and you come perilously close to denying Christ's full humanity.

As a Nicene Chalcedonian, I think I'll stick with what I know.

How ought one to describe Christ's full humanity ?

 

[Erik Nelson]

I have a problem. I am told I have to accept everything as written in the bible if I want to call myself a christian. So even starting with Genesis - noone knows who wrote it (theres a few vague theories) and noone knows when it was written (depending on your source its between 1000 BC and 6 BC). In our life if something so critical to your welfare was put to you, you'd want to know "who says" "when did he/she say that" and "what makes him/her the expert". How do we know he/she was telling the truth. Noone ever questioned the author that we know of. And since then theres been editions.

Im being asked to not question a document thats been edited from an original that noone knows who wrote, or when or the veracity of that unknown person. Its so much to ask of a person and then I have to use that information to refute all scientific evidence on issues such as the age of the earth.

Is it possible that their are lessons to be learned from the scriptures without demanding that it is word for word correct.

St. Paul says repeatedly (e.g. Rom 14, 2 Cor 6) that we should not be stumbling blocks to others.

Of course, that would imply to you as well, all of us in the same boat. Maybe everyone could agree, that Scripture is significant, valuable, imbued with Spiritual & moral messages "woven into" the history like passages... and maybe even that those Spiritual meanings are more significant than "technical details" of "history class final exam" dates ?

Biblical scholars do think they know who wrote the OT (link). By which we mean, wrote down what we now have in hand. Everything in the Bible ultimately derives from older sources -- some surely even from ancient oral traditions handed down from pre-historic times before writing -- which were then copied for centuries as the Hebrew language & script evolved, until finally one form was "locked in" and has remained unchanged for the better part of 3000 years.

According to the JEPD "documentary" hypothesis, one scribe under King Solomon wrote down the first major compilation of Israelite history in the 10th century BC, called the "J" document, which contains elements of most every book from Genesis to Judges to Kings (R.E. Friedman, Hidden Book in the Bible). The scribe who wrote it may be named in the Bible! It was Israel's national epic in the days of David & Solomon, from Creation to David & Solomon and the 1st Temple.

After that kingdom was divided, Prophetic schools (e.g. Elijah & Elisha and their followers) in northern Israelite wrote E in about the 9th - 8th century BC. The Priestly reforms of Hezekiah and the Temple Priesthood occasioned P [= Leviticus mostly] around 700 BC. A hundred years later, Jeremiah (and refugees from fallen Israel) under King Josiah combined J+E+D [=Deuteronomy] into JED.

All these documents were miraculously preserved even in the Babylonian Captivity, after which Ezra combined JED (from Jeremiah under King Josiah) with P (from the Temple Priests under Hezekiah) into JEPD in around 450 BC. The Torah has remained essentially unchanged since that time. It represents the "purest" Hebrew Scriptures as preserved by the scribes of David & Solomon as well as the Religious reformers Hezekiah & Josiah, plus the faithful Prophetic schools of Elijah & Elisha et al. of northern Israel.

Do note that those scribes surely drew on (ancient) libraries' worth of older, prior records. They extracted the "most important highlights" (and the Religious would say they did so under Divine Inspiration & Guidance) and wrote those into the surviving [ J/E/D + P ] documents. Moses wrote the 10 Commandments on stone tablets deposited in the Arc of the Covenant. Obviously, we don't have those. But (according to the JED+P hypothesis) later scribes drew from the writings of Moses and others, as well as oral traditions, and (presumably) faithfully transferred their contents into the form we have now. So you don't have to deny that Moses was the ultimate author of much of the Pentateuch, say, even though scholars think they can date the versions we have now to scribes under Solomon, Hezekiah & Josiah.

It's much like Christianity. Nobody claims to have the very first copy of the Gospel written by the hands of the original Apostles themselves. But we think their words have been faithfully preserved by later authors. "There's nothing new under the Sun" said Solomon in Ecclesiastes. So the JED+P documentary hypothesis is not actually antagonistic to Judeo-Christianity, even if some seem to feel that way. R.E. Friedman (Who Wrote the Bible?) may be the best & most accessible author on the topic.