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This is the central affirmation of the Chalcedonian Definition. Jesus is not a man indwelt by the Logos so that the man can lead us up to God. He is the Logos who has come down to become human so that he could save us.

When Reformed theology hears Scripture teaching both divine sovereignty and human responsibility, divine election and the universal offer of the gospel, it affirms both even though it confesses that it does not know quite how God coordinates them behind the scenes.

As word spread of what had happened, these churches joined together in opposition to the Council of Ephesus and became an identifiably separate group, today called the Assyrian Church of the East (usually called the Nestorian Church in Western textbooks).20 The Church of the East did and does affirm the first two ecumenical councils and the Nicene Creed, but rejected and rejects the Council of Ephesus..

“Reformed theology is simply covenant theology,” according to I. John Hesselink. In other words, Reformed theology is guided by a concern to relate various biblical teachings to the concrete covenants in Scripture as their proper context.”

The bottom line was that both Arianism and Nestorianism put our salvation in the hands of one who was not fully God. Arianism did this by arguing that the Son was a creature. Nestorianism did this by arguing that even though the Son was above the hard line and equal to the Father, Christ was a creature, a graced man, rather than being God the Son himself.

In the first case, ousia is used to mean “essence,” and physis, hypostasis, and prosōpon are all words for “person.” This was the way most of the church was using the words in the early fifth century. In the second case, ousia and physis become words for “essence/nature,” and the words hypostasis and prosōpon become words for “person.”

Gregory’s phrase “the unassumed is unhealed” went on to become one of the most famous catchphrases in Christian theological history.

“As man he was baptized, but he absolved sins as God. . . . As man he was put to the test, but as God he came through victorious. . . . He hungered, yet he fed thousands.”

We also mentioned earlier that unlike the Nicene Creed, universally accepted in the Christian church, the Chalcedonian Definition has proven to be strikingly divisive. Along the way to that definition, four councils were held (including two competing councils meeting at the same time in Ephesus in 431, one of which is now considered ecumenical), reaching seemingly disparate conclusions.

it is the only one for which ecumenicity, or universal acceptance, can be plausibly claimed. . . . It is thus one of the few threads by which the tattered fragments of the divided robe of Christendom are held together.” This creed truly is, more than any other document penned by human beings, a creed for the entire church.

Thus, one could say that Protestants take “believe in the church” in the sense of “believe that there is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”39 Roman Catholics tend to take “believe in” more strongly here and to focus on the role of the church as an extension of the incarnation, drawing its life from Christ and mediating his grace to the world.

The third of the “Great Cappadocians” was Basil’s and Gregory’s best friend, Gregory of Nazianzus (often called Gregory the Theologian). He was one of the great orators of the early church, and his Five Theological Orations on the Trinity provide one of the best examples of mature trinitarian theology as it developed in the late fourth century.

Athanasius himself was exiled five different times for a total of seventeen years, sometimes to the West and sometimes to the Sahara Desert in Upper Egypt.

“…homoousios would likewise be quite clear, it turned out to be perhaps the most controversial word in Christian theological history, as we will see shortly.”

“The majority of the bishops entered the council (of Nicaea) without a clear idea of what the issue was or even what was wrong with describing the Son as being lower than the Father, but Alexander, Hosius, and company quickly convinced them of the need to reject Arius’s teaching.”

Origen’s thought was regarded by many as being problematic, but it was enthusiastically embraced by others, and we label the ascetic movement that he started as Origenism.

the “Great Persecution of Persia” in the 340s was far more devastating than the Roman persecutions had been.