Justin Effler > Recent Status Updates

Covenant in both Old and New Testaments, so we have argued, is a broad term encompassing a variety of arrangements—most notably, conditional covenants of law and unconditional covenants of promise. Already in the Old Testament itself there are these two covenant types: suzerainty and royal grant, the latter fitting perfectly the New Testament concept of diathk or “last will and testament.”

when the Filioque was the issue, it was not so much the theology of the double procession per se that divided but the question of whether it was permissible to alter a creed approved by an ecumenical council. Thus, even the Filioque controversy itself was as much a matter of ecclesiastical authority as it was a doctrinal dividing line.

The Filioque was not actually the source of the controversy that bears its name, or even the main issue of that controversy. Rather, the dispute was about jurisdiction over the Bulgarian tribes and about Rome’s right to intervene in internal, nondoctrinal matters in Constantinople. The Filioque was simply a wedge issue, which Photius inserted into the controversy late in the day in order to rally the East vs west

In 431, the Council of Ephesus condemned Pelagianism in one of its minor actions, almost certainly as a simple courtesy to the pope.

Pelagius’s major concern was that people have no excuses for moral laxity. He insisted that what prevented us from doing what God required was not nature but habit. From this starting point, he elaborated an understanding in which the influence of Adam on a person was that of a bad example, and the influence of Christ was that of a good example. There was no transmission of sin from generation to generation

The first schism came in the midst of the persecutions under the emperors Decius (249–51) and Valerian (257–58). During these persecutions, a large number of Christians renounced their faith either by offering sacrifices to the Roman gods or by bribing Roman officials to write them certificates saying that they had done so, though they had not.

Augustine has played only a minor role in our story so far because, by accidents of geography and timing, he took no part in the great councils leading to the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Definition. He had not yet become a Christian at the time of the Second Ecumenical Council in 381 and had already died by the time of the Third Ecumenical Council in 431.

The Israelites of Jesus’s and Paul’s day had misidentified themselves with Abraham, Sarah, and Zion when in fact they were simply under a covenant of law. They thought they were justified according to the terms of Sinai when in fact they were only condemned by it. The only hope, for Jew and Gentile, is to be incorporated into Abraham—the “heavenly Jerusalem”—by union with Christ through faith alone.

The unilateral and utterly promissory character of the Abrahamic covenant yields to the conditional arrangement at Sinai even while the former is never—can never be—revoked by the oathtaking God.

Nevertheless, the iconoclasts produced some substantial theological arguments, which they put forward at a council controlled by Emperor Constantine V (a more violent enemy of icons than his father, Leo III, had been) in 754 in Hiera (near Chalcedon).

In such cases, prominent churchmen were willing to stare down the empire. Maximus himself suffered terribly for his bravery. He was tried in imperial court in 654 and exiled to Thrace upon his refusal to recant. upon his refusal to recant. He was again tried in 661, and when he would still not recant, his right hand and his tongue were cut off, and he was sent to exile in the Caucasus, where he died the next year.

…from the birth to the death of Christ. Since it was really God the Son who was born for us, it was really God the Son who died for us. He died in his humanity, not in terms of his deity per se, but the person who hung on the cross bearing the sin of the world was God’s eternal Son himself, who humbled himself not only to the point of incarnation but even to the point of death on the cross.

While there are certainly more than two explicit covenants in Scripture, they can all be grouped around two kinds of arrangements: conditional covenants that impose obligations and unconditional covenants that announce a divine promise. I will attempt to show the importance of distinguishing these two types for interpreting the biblical message.

The Athanasian Creed certainly is a creedal anomaly. It was not composed by the person whose name it bears or even in the language he spoke or the part of the Christian world where he lived. It was not originally intended as a creed and only very gradually began to be used liturgically. It has rarely been accepted outside the Western Christian world and has recently fallen into disfavor even there.

The Athanasian Creed certainly is a creedal anomaly. It was not composed by the person whose name it bears or even in the language he spoke or the part of the Christian world where he lived. It was not originally intended as a creed and only very gradually began to be used liturgically. It has rarely been accepted outside the Western Christian world and has recently fallen into disfavor even there.

By shifting the focus to doctrines, the Western church opened up the possibility that systematic theology might become divorced from the actual living of a life dedicated to God, his Son, and his Spirit. This divorce does not always take place…. but notice that what makes the divorce possible is the shift from persons to doctrines, from the ones in whom we believe to the things that we believe.

Covenant theology begins with continuity rather than discontinuity, not because of any a priori bias, but because Scripture itself moves from promise to fulfillment, not from one distinct program to another and then back again.

Thus, in this chapter we call the document “The Catholic Faith”2 as well as the “Athanasian Creed.” It is ironic that a document never meant as a creed, and not regarded as such until some seven hundred years after its composition, is revered as a creed today not only by Roman Catholics but also by those Protestants who affirm creeds.

perhaps it is best to regard the Apostles’ Creed as a skeleton on which the whole of Christian faith and doctrine can be hung. Although it did not come directly from the apostles, it does bring cohesion and structure to their proclamation of the gospel.

Accordingly, although the clause made its way into the Apostles’ Creed relatively late, it did have a long pedigree and widespread affirmation earlier. We cannot justly argue that the church’s early faith did not include Christ’s descent into hell.

The earliest appearance of the Apostles’ Creed in its final form comes in a compendium of Christian doctrine written for Benedictine monks engaged in missionary work in the region of Lake Constance (on the borders of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland today). The author of the document was St. Priminius, and it can be dated between 710 and 724…

In fact, the Oriental Orthodox churches have continued to use the word physis in its earlier sense, akin to “person,” and thus their affirmation of one physis should be understood as “one person,” not “one nature.”