The Metaphysical Foundations of Christianity
September 2021
Through the history of Christianity, there have been many schisms – some containing within themselves more legitimacy than others. Typically, the arguments between apostolic faiths and Protestants comes down to individual quarrels about the position of priests, confession, works, idolatry, Mariology, etc. However, this does not at all address the issue at hand. Proving the need for confession does absolutely nothing in the grand scope of the argument. Proving any particular disagreement does not address the schism itself. Arguing the significance of Matthew 16 and Acts 1 does immensely more. If the validity of the Church itself is established, everything else thereby from the Church itself is also established inherently. The validity of the Church, however, is not the object of this essay per se. Rather, it is the unintended incoherence and, often, heresy that is fallen into naturally by being apart.
Theologically, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are not terribly at odds, unlike Protestantism with the apostolic faiths or even Protestantism against itself. There had been other schisms than the 1054 Great Schism before Protestantism came about. Some of which persist to this day. If you plot the denominations on a timeline, you would find that there is only greater and greater divergence from original beliefs as time progresses. As one traces the fracturing of denominations backward in time, one will find a closer and closer set of beliefs among different denominations, such as Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Oriental Orthodoxy. Most any of these schisms which happened prior to Protestantism, closer to the days of Christ, spawned denominations which are theologically and ecclesiologically very similar. Denominations are only continually more novel as time progresses. Likewise, only being founded more and more by social outcasts like Roger Williams and Joseph Smith, rather than wholesale disagreements, as time progresses. The same can be found along smaller timelines, namely specifically of Protestantism. The High Church Protestants are much older than the others, and are typically very sound theologically. As Protestantism progresses and continually fractures, less and less of the faith which spawned Protestants exists among them. Transubstantiation is a chief example, which the original Protestants (such as Lutherans) retained in a relative form (Consubstantiation), but newer denominations have forgotten. Even the sacrament of baptism has been reduced. On the grand scale, taking Christianity as a whole, the same is observed, Protestantism being the acceleration of this degradation in faith. If Catholic ecclesiology and the validity of Transubstantiation were as obviously false as many Protestants will make them out to be, then I can only ask why it took nearly 1,500 years for anyone to think of it. Some may quip that the original Christians did not believe in any of this and were, in fact, as whatever particular Protestant denomination is today. The fact that Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome all projected ecclesiological powers under the pretense of their connection to Saint Peter – in the times that Christians were persecuted – should make any Protestant reconsider Matthew 16 and the easily demonstrably false novel notion that the Catholic Church was founded by the merging of Roman state and religious institutions. As John Henry Newman put it: “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”
Martin Luther merely wanted to amend the Church’s behaviors, which eventually spawned several denominations in “protest” – hence “Protestantism”. In needing to justify their newfound faiths, which wielded no apostolic succession, which was a commonly understood tenet of the Christian faiths up until that point, the Protestants were forced to revise to become more internally coherent. Protestants then diverged further still, dropping the notion of “protest” and instead being a standalone faith. They are no longer “protestant” in a strict sense. In so doing, they willingly severed the direct historical lineage to Christ Himself, as well as the very Church which defined such core principles as Trinitarianism. As each new denomination fractured into another, each succession stripped away another tenet. This willful severing from the Early Church and the ideas of non- authoritative Biblical interpretation is the particular focus here. To demonstrate how subtle and yet catastrophic this can be, I ask: Is Mary the mother of God?
Triadology is a complicated and nuanced subject. The first several hundred years of Christianity saw many heretical views surrounding it specifically. The Trinity will never be fully known to any man, but any man can glean some of it from scripture. One would think John 1:1 and John 10:30 would be enough to conclude as the First Council of Nicaea did in 325. Surely, though, it only seems so obvious a conclusion because of the Nicene Creed and its precedence for the last 1,696 years. The Nicene Creed is a foundational piece of Christianity and something even Protestants will profess. Yet, with its constant fracturing, we have now arrived at pseudo- Trinitarians (Mormons) and outright denialists (Jehovah’s Witnesses). Trinitarianism is, and has been, a broken concept for many Christians. It is one thing to believe in the Trinity, and another to believe in the Trinity as well as all necessary tangential tenets. The objective of the Early Church was to root out heresies in dogmatically defining core principles of Christianity, which, taken to their logical conclusions, would not conflict. Protestantism, severed from this, may be coherent at a glance, but not at all with a long gaze.
John 1:1 and 10:30, as obvious as they may sound now, were not obvious for the contemporaries of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries. Arius had his own ideas of the Trinity, which became quite popular. In fact, the Nicene Creed was made in direct response to him. The Creed states:
“… Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”
Arianism can be conceptualized in many ways, and is silently a very persistent heresy to this day. Though, many of its modern adherents probably have never heard of Arius. It can be phrased as Christ being begotten from the Father within time, or also that the Son and Father are not of the same substance. It is a question of the nature of Christ’s divinity.
In what way was Christ both God and man?
Before the time of Saint Thomas Aquinas, there was not as specific of a distinction between metaphysical terms. The original Greek of the Nicene Creed reads “homoousion” in place of “consubstantial”. “Homo” being “one” and “ousia” being “essence”. The Greek “ousia” was translated into Latin as both “essence” and “substance”, hence the Latinization of “homoousion” came out as “consubstantial”. The Father and the Son are of the same single essence.
God is not composed of parts. He is “ipsum esse subsistens”, the very act of “being”. He “be’s”. He simply “is”. He is essence in itself. This is the principle of Divine Simplicity. God subsists at such a fundamental level that there can be no distinction between His existence – His “being” – and His acts. “Being”, itself, is an action. So, just as God is pure being, He is also pure act (actus purus). In Exodus 3:14, God reveals Himself to Moses as “I am that I am”. Ehyeh (אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה) (I am) is one of many names of God, for the Hebrews knew God as He Who “is”. Later, in the New Testament, Christ identifies Himself by the same name in John 8:58, which is why His peers were so offended.
Nicaea established the humanity and divinity of Christ, co-eternal with the Father, but not the relationship between His humanity and divinity within Him. About one hundred years later came Nestorius, who called this into question. Nestorius held that within Christ were two prosopons (essentially “persons”), one divine and one human, held together in a prosopic union. This union inherently implies that the divine and human prosopons are distinct and separate from one another. This is not how we understand Christ, as this would mean that Christ cannot be wholly God and wholly man. As Nicaea was for Arius, the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon were called in response to Nestorius. Just as most Protestants would profess the Nicene Creed, most would also profess the Chalcedonian Creed, which reads:
“[We] confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Likewise, Protestants should have no issue also professing the Athanasian Creed:
“Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the Substance [Essence] of the Father; begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Substance [Essence] of his Mother, born in the world. Perfect God; and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father as touching his Manhood. Who although he is God and Man; yet he is not two, but one Christ. One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by assumption of the Manhood into God. One altogether; not by confusion of Substance [Essence]; but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man; so God and Man is one Christ.”
These rightly established then, and unchanged to this day, that Christ is perfectly God in whole and perfectly human in whole. He is entirely God and entirely human in one person, being two indivisible, inseparable natures. Again, I ask: Is Mary the mother of God?
Many Protestants, for various reasons, would have it that Mary is not the mother of God. “Mary can only be the mother of Christ’s humanity,” they might say. This answer to the dilemma makes sense at face value. The Son is co-eternal with the Father, so to say Mary is His mother would imply that either God Himself was begotten, which is impossible, or the Son was begotten separate from the Father, which is impossible. This, however, is not the case. The Protestant answer to the relationship between Christ’s humanity and divinity only highlights the innate incoherence from separating oneself from the Early Church.
Christ is understood as perfectly, indivisibly, wholly man and God. The only Christians who would deny that statement are outlier denominations. However, many modern Christians implicitly deny this. If Mary were only the mother of Christ’s humanity, then we are necessarily making a distinction – a real, not a virtual, distinction – between Christ’s humanity and divinity. If there is some division between the two, then Christ’s two natures necessarily cannot be wholly united in one person. Division is the opposite of union. The Hypostatic Union is broken, which is one of the chief and foundational principles of Christianity.
Most who hold that Mary is not the mother of God do not think any further than that seemingly inconsequential statement. Even as grammatically simple of a sentence as it is, the implications are complicated and nuanced. So, let us be the ones to think further. If Mary is not the mother of God, thereby breaking the Hypostatic Union, then one of the following is necessarily true: (1) Christ is wholly human and not divine (Arianism), which arouses new problems that are worth an entire essay themselves, (2) Christ assumed His divinity post-birth, implying Christ could not have been conceived of the Holy Spirit, or (3) Mary is not the mother of Christ whatsoever.
It was precisely this dilemma of the person of Christ and, by extension, Mary’s position relative to Him, that spawned the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. If Mary is not the mother of God, she is not the Theotokos, but the Christotokos. This was one of Nestorius’ arguments, which is the argument of many Protestants – ignorant of what Nestorius used to arrive at such a conclusion. I also imagine anyone who holds this position is entirely ignorant of Nestorius himself. Those of the Early Church understood that the position of Mary relative to God, taken to its logical conclusions, could break the Trinity or the person of Christ. Protestants, largely, blindly accept the will of the councils, blindly accept all the core principles which they established, yet reject their authority altogether. Then, unbound to any ecclesiology, Protestants are left to pick and choose what else they believe without much consideration. Here, we see that Protestants will gladly accept the Trinity and the two natures (Dyophysitism) of Christ in the Hypostatic Union, but, unbound from any dogmas or creeds, will also accept ideas which inherently contradict the Trinity and Hypostatic Union.
The Protestant position on Mary is mutually exclusive with the common understanding of Christ. This position can, taken to its logical conclusions, only be reconciled by denying the Hypostatic Union (thus breaking our understanding of Christ as perfectly God and perfectly man). This takes one scarily close to also denying the Trinity. Because of how silently destructive this belief is, it was declared heresy. Many Protestant denominations have unwittingly revived Nestorianism, though.
Mary not being the mother of God is therefore a superficial understanding of both her and God. That is not to say everyone necessarily should understand these things, as theology is not for everyone. It is to say, however, that anything beyond shallow theology is (almost) nonexistent among the Protestant faiths. Because they have willingly severed themselves from the Early Church, they have removed from their own faiths the very metaphysical foundations which established their core beliefs. They may be Trinitarian, but what is the Trinity to one who also believes that which is antithetical to the Trinity? What is Christ to one who also believes that which is antithetical to Christ’s divinity?
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The foundations of Christianity are concrete, robust, and firmly planted. Any faith built upon these will also be the same. Imagine a great cathedral standing upon these foundations. It is solid, bricked, and tall. Surely, it will stand the test of time. Now, imagine a church with hollow ground beneath. Surely, unlike the cathedral, it will collapse upon itself. Protestants have made for themselves a superficially sound church. However, they have dug out its foundation. From without, it has a rock foundation. From within, it has no metaphysical foundation. No wonder, then, that Protestantism has fractured into hundreds of denominations – many with irreconcilable differences. Many, even, are at odds with themselves. Where there is no actual foundation, different parts of a church will collapse in and clash with one another. Such is demonstrated in the lack of understanding that Mary is the mother of God. Superficially, they are soundly Christian. They profess that Christ is God, yet in the next breath contradict their own understanding of Christ.
Denial of the authority of the Early Church is to call into question any one of the core principles of Christianity. How does one know Christ is divine? How does one know the Trinity? The Bible? Arius used the Bible. Nestorius used the Bible. The hundreds of separate Protestant denominations use the Bible. How does one know their own interpretation is correct? By what authority? The Bible? Arius, Nestorius, and all hundreds of Protestant denominations consider the Bible an authoritative text. I would dare to say there would not be hundreds of separate Protestant denominations if sola scriptura itself were sound. Without having an intimate understanding of the metaphysical foundations of Christianity, such as the Hypostatic Union, they are left to pick and choose like a grocery aisle whichever individual tenets of Christianity were held as orthodox since its early days. Most Protestants grabbed the box of Dyophysitism, the Hypostatic Union, and the Trinity, but, for whatever reason, did not pick up the Theotokos – all the while it is a necessary component for the former. This could only unwittingly be done by abandoning the very church which established it. Is it any wonder so many Protestant faiths are irreconcilable? Is it any wonder they continually fracture as they mix and match their interpretations? Likewise, it is any wonder that the apostolic faiths are more-or-less theologically and ecclesiologically unified? They take for granted the history of Christianity. They believe what the Early Church established and reject the Church itself wholesale. If Protestants were left to rebuild Christianity from nothing, left with only the Bible, they would be hard-pressed to establish any of the core foundational components of Christianity that we currently have.
The Early Church is necessary. Its declarations are necessary. 1.3 billion people are baptized per that same Church today.