Calling all UK church leaders, are you feeling overwhelmed trying to lead your congregation in evangelism? Do you find yourself struggling to keep up with the fast-paced digital conversation? What would it look like if you and your congregation were energized and equipped to share Christ with your community authentically in both digital and physical spaces? At Speak Life, we understand the unique challenges church leaders face today. That's why we're excited to invite you to the January 2025 Intensive. Three days of transformative, hands-on training in our Eastbourne studio. From the 23rd to the 25th of January, join us for an experience that's designed to inspire, empower, and equip you with cutting-edge tools and strategies for ministry in the digital age. During the intensive, you'll be surrounded by a community of like-minded leaders getting stuck into practical digital workshops, creative mission strategies, and solid Christ-centered theology. With limited spaces, the January Intensive is your exclusive chance to experience this reimagined approach to evangelism training. Early bird tickets start at just £125 and are available until the 25th of November. Hurry! Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Visit speaklife.org.uk forward slash intensives now to secure your spot and get ready to transform how you lead your congregation.
SPEAKER_02Have you ever thought about how your bank uses your savings? What if I told you there's a fully regulated Christian bank that aligns your money with your faith? When you open a Kingdom Bank savings account, you help to provide vital mortgages for churches, Christian ministries, and gospel workers who might struggle to secure one elsewhere. Whether saving for yourself or on behalf of your church, your savings will support Christian ministries across the UK. And when you're ready to take your money out, you get it back with interest. If your spending and giving reflect your faith, shouldn't your savings as well? Open a savings account with Kingdom Bank today and put your money where your heart is. Visit kingdom.bankslash speaklife. Kingdom Bank is a member of the FSCS and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus, including Cyril of Alexandria. Do you know about Cyril of Alexandria? I've got somebody on the line who knows all about Cyril and why he can change your life. It's Dan Haames. Hello, Dan. Hi, Glenn. Would you like to introduce yourself to uh all the viewers and uh let us know uh why the person of Cyril has been uh a real passion of yours, such that you've devoted uh a lot of the last chunk of your life to studying him? Of course, yeah.
SPEAKER_01My name is Dan Haymes. I'm vice president and lecturer in theology at Union School of Theology. I uh live in Oxfordshire, um married to Sarah just a few months ago, so we are just setting up our home there. Uh and I'm surrounded by boxes, which hopefully you can't see on the screen. Uh that would be very messy.
SPEAKER_02No, no. We sit we see all your credibility giving books behind you and an icon. You can't be a patristic scholar without having an icon in the study. I mean that's that kind of goes with the territory, doesn't it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So why Cyril? Yeah, Cyril um he is a uh 5th century church leader and bishop, and um yeah, I I discovered him, it felt a little bit by rand you know at random to be honest. I I um I was starting to read about some of the the figures in church history, and he became a favourite of mine really quickly, partly because he seemed like um a bit of a character. Um we might be able to talk about that later if you want. There's some some stuff in his life which is just there's a bit of sort of drama and interest and intrigue. But the main thing was he just has a a vision of Jesus which is so big, um, so surprising, and for me, so comforting that I kind of got a little bit hooked on reading Cyril. Uh his commentaries are like on various books of the Bible, are available in English. He has a bunch of theological books which are kind of more directed at answering theological questions and talking about the debates of the day. But for me, it was like in all of that, I just got hooked on seeing here's a guy who sees Jesus in a way that I hadn't and I I need it.
SPEAKER_02So we'll think about the the specific debates in his day and and the sort of clarity of vision for Jesus that he brought. But give us a picture for why we should care about dead guys in the first place. Um, you know, if you if there is such a thing as a Christian bookstore anymore, and if you ever go into it, uh you're you're going to be shown a whole list of you know various new titles. Um and including including yours, right? And so uh we're not against new books, new books are are good, but why is it that we should read the old dead guys?
SPEAKER_01Perhaps the main reason is um when you read someone like Cyril, you know, he's he's in fifth century Egypt. It doesn't get a lot different from us and where we are. So, you know, I'm here in Oxfordshire in 2024. I've got a way of seeing the world that's completely shaped by my context and where I am. I have insights and thoughts about the world, um, but I also have blind spots and stuff that I just just I assume and everyone around me assumes. And to pick up and read uh books by people who have been gone a long time, or people who are in a completely different context and culture, it it challenges us and stretches us in ways that you just don't get when you read someone you know from your own context and your own time. Uh so for me it's been like a life-giving thing to have that challenge and that stretch. Um, often as well, these these people have been trying to be Christians, trying to follow Jesus and live for him in circumstances which are just a lot more trying than ours, certainly in like contemporary Western world. Um, to see the picture of Jesus that someone has, which has been forged in the fires of persecution and suffering, and um all the press of life, you know, pre-modern medicine and all that kind of stuff. Um, it just opens doors to insights that we just don't have, and so it's such a healthy thing to have that. C.S. Lewis talked about um the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through when we read older older books. Um it's like just this refreshing like breeze coming through that just like oh wakes you up and does something different to you. So it's highly recommended.
SPEAKER_02So tell us uh a little bit, therefore, about some of the blind spots that you found Cyril kind of spotlighting in your own life. Um you you grew up in a in a Christian home, uh kind of I guess loving Jesus as a as a kid and a teenager and that sort of thing. What what what kind of sort of spiritual life did you have? And then how did Cyril kind of come and show you aspects that you might have been missing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I grew up in a Christian home, and I'm so grateful to you know been raised in church um by parents who love the Lord. Um but like many, like many young Christians, um, I think I kind of put together a picture of God and of Jesus, which there was truth to it, but it was distorted, and there were elements of that which I think basically caused me trouble for quite a long time. Um I I particularly struggled with assurance, um, knowing any kind of confidence before God. I wanted to love God, I wanted to please him, and I did have a sense that God loved me, but I guess in my mind, most of the time, God's love for me was a bit conditional on how I performed, um, how good a Christian I was being, how much I was putting to death the sin in my life. And I think probably over time I also began to think maybe the best the best kind of barometer of my spiritual health was the kind of spiritual experiences I was having or not having, and so I was judging myself by you know what seemed to be almost like ecstatic experiences of those people around me, which I just wasn't having. So I was I began to think at one point in my Christian life, um, I I want to be a Christian, I as far as I can tell, I that's sincere, but given nothing is happening, given that I don't seem to be growing, I don't seem to be feeling God all the time. Maybe actually I'm just fooling myself, and deep down I'm not interested in God, I don't love him, and you know, basically, therefore, he's out to get me. And so I um I can remember sitting in meetings where uh it was promised to us, you know, we're gonna have someone here who who is highly prophetic, who's going to you know have insight from God about various people in the room, and I'd be thinking, Oh, that is the last thing I want to happen, because you know, God will be revealing all kinds of awful things about me to this person, which might be said in public, and I I'm just gonna be exposed. And so for all I'd for all I'd been taught about Jesus, you know, very very um kindly and wonderfully by my parents and by church, what I what I I guess what I actually thought was Jesus was something to be said about what a God is like, uh, but he's not he's not he's not the whole deal, he's a he's a factor. Um but behind Jesus is a God who's probably well quite unpredictable to be honest, very powerful, very concerned with my moral performance, always sort of got a BD eye on how I'm doing, and however kind and compassionate Jesus seems to be, behind him always lurks the kind of like the real God, and I'm I guess I was frankly quite scared of him and never knew where I stood with him. And what Cyril did for me, and we could talk about this more, is he just refocused it so it was like now Jesus is the way you even know who God is, you put Jesus front and centre, and he becomes the heart of everything there is to say about God. And for me, that was a complete revolution, it changed everything for me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I see that just in the way that you've kind of structured the book. You you give us a sense of the man from Alexandria and and who Cyril was. Uh, you then talk about the Nestorian controversy, and we'll get into who is Nestorius, what did he say, uh, how how did Cyril start to to fight back against that? And and I guess a lot of the ways that he kind of fought against the Nestorian heresy was by doing these three things, putting Jesus front and center, who gives us a vision of God, and what salvation is. And that's kind of the the structure of the book, and that's an interesting way around, isn't it? To to think about, okay, let's think about Jesus and then God and then salvation, because I know a lot of a lot of gospel preaching, and certainly I I grew up in churches where basically it went it went God salvation Jesus, right? There was basically there's this God and you've fallen short of this God, so I guess you need saving. And so we've established we've established what God is, and we've established what salvation is, and now Jesus comes along as a helpful mechanism to do the saving bit and help us get back to the God that we'd believed in even before Jesus was on the scene. I think that's a really common way of setting things up. Um why why is that a bad way of setting things up, Dan Hames?
SPEAKER_01Well, the danger is that we we, as you say, in it when we do it like that, we're wheeling in Jesus to achieve something that we have we've already decided who God is, what it is we need from him, how we stand before him, and um what has to happen. And we wheel Jesus in to to achieve that for us when scripture actually in almost everywhere you look is telling us you don't need to think about who God is, what it is to be a human being, both a human being and right created relationship with God, fallen relationship with God through sin and and evil and suffering, and then restored and redeemed humanity, or or the whole of reality. You just don't need to think about those things unless you've got Jesus there first, defining them. And so if for scripture it's like he's he's the he's the crucial piece in understanding God yourself and everything, rather than, as you say, wheeling him in as like an answer to a question you've already formulated.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Um in the book I I I spoke about um the the the kind of the the joke we had in our family growing up where in Sunday school as kids the answer to every question is Jesus and you we would kind of laugh and roll our eyes at that because it's like of course it is you can kind of you can kind of you know get you know every every Sunday in Sunday school you can kind of ace the test every time if you just keep saying Jesus and um we laughed about that as kids because it it seems silly to us, and I think my my thought has become that's actually quite profound. The answer to everything is Jesus, and he even we could put it this way, he even sets the questions. It's not just that he's the answer you wheel in, he even sets up the questions, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And if um so who was it? It was a theologian who was summarizing Athanasius, wasn't it? And and I forget who the the the summariser of Athanasius basically said the whole if you want to get Athanasius, who was like a century before um Nestorius, uh and before Cyril, um his his whole theology was the only system of thought into which Jesus Christ will fit is the one in which he is the starting point. Um which I think is like that's that's again, I think a real challenge to us because we don't usually we don't begin with Jesus. Jesus He's not the Alpha and the Omega, he's he's sort of the Kappa and the Omega, right? He's he's the middle and the Alpha, right? And and we we so resist that in all sorts of ways. And like you say, Jesus then comes as the solution to a problem, the parameters of which were set without him. And then, as we're talking about Christology, and obviously Cyril is is known for his Christology, doctrine of the person of Christ, um it then becomes the problem of um how is how is Jesus both God and man? And you you've set it up instantly as as this this this huge thorny issue, and it's probably gonna be a tug of war between humanity and divinity, and probably to the degree that you lean into the divinity, you're probably gonna lose the humanity, and probably to the degree degree that you lean into the humanity, you're gonna lose the divinity, aren't you? Because you've set things up already with God and humanity and the human problem, and then Jesus comes in sort of secondarily. Um, do you see that as as partly where Nestorius goes wrong? And I guess in order to answer that question, you'll need to s you'll need to tell us who Nestorius is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Well, let me say first, yeah, I think that's exactly what Nostorus does. Um, if people don't know about him already, um you might not want to listen to what I'm about to say, because I'm I need to, as I explain who he is, almost tell a story about him which has been really popular in the Western world for a long time, which I think is a bit inaccurate. So Nostorus became Archbishop in Constantinople in the the early 420s, and he was by all accounts a brilliant communicator, a great preacher, and everyone thought basically he was um he was going to be wonderful, and he um by by becoming Archbishop of Constantinople became really the most popular um preacher in the world. This is like the the kind of platform, you know, this is celebrity preacher territory. And um he he wanted to speak about Jesus and it became quite controversial quite quickly. He wanted to speak about Jesus in such a way that he really divorced the son of Mary, that that human man born of Mary, from a really a separate person, the son of God. And he almost viewed the two as being like two separate sons, uh, who were sort of thinly veiled, almost, you know, like uh like kids under a ghost outfit, you know, on Halloween. Um thinly veiled as one Christ, but really behind you know, behind this very thin veil was two sons, a son of Mary and the Son of God. Um what's what's often said about Nestorius is that um he wasn't um he wasn't a Nestorian, he didn't really sign up to the heresy that later kind of got his name. And people say, Oh, he was just trying to emphasize that that Christ was human, he wanted to emphasize the humanity of Christ. Um that's just not really that accurate, it just doesn't really communicate what he's trying to do. He is trying to keep the humanity and the divinity of Christ so separate that he has to make them two individuals, two sons. Um it particularly blew up because he didn't want to say that um Mary was the mother of God. And this was a uh very popular phrase in the early church to to speak of Mary as the mother of God. Um for some of us, we immediately think, well, I don't know if I like that phrase myself. Um it sounds a little bit like um later Roman Catholic veneration.
SPEAKER_02It sounds like it's saying something about Mary, doesn't it? It it sounds it it sounds like the whole thing is it's this Marian dogma, and so we're we're exalting Mary by saying that she's the bearer of God. But actually it's it's actually talking about the one that's in her womb, isn't it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01The the early church would use all kinds of phrases that are a bit like this idea the idea of calling a woman the mother of God. They would say things like at Christmas God was wrapped in swaddling clothes, or they'd say, uh, God walked the streets of Nazareth, you know, like thinking of Jesus as a toddler. And the idea is it's meant to provoke this kind of collision in your head, and to to imagine God is wrapped in swaddling bands, or a woman, Mary, gives birth to God. It's um it's not a statement about Mary so much as a statement about who her son is. And uh Nestorus particularly didn't like those kinds of turns of phrase.
SPEAKER_02He didn't like this idea why didn't he like why didn't he like calling Mary the mother of God? Because he because he he would say she was the Christbearer, the bearer of Christ, but he wasn't happy to say she was mother of God.
SPEAKER_01I think it begins really with he just as we've just spoken about, he had a a definition and a description of God pre-cooked in his mind before he came to look at Jesus. And so he would say, you know, if you if you say that God could be born of a woman, you're just mad. It's just impossible. It's a stupid thing to say, doesn't make any sense. And um of course, on one level, yeah, no one no one's tr but no one's trying to say that, no one's saying, Oh, God came to be when Mary gave birth to him. Uh he's he's wanting to keep divinity away from the the the humanness of Jesus' life. Um so actually, when people say Nestorius was trying to emphasize the humanity of Christ, um actually what he's trying to do is protect the this divine humanity. Yeah, yeah. Like keep it away from this nasty humanity. Like imagine what God would be born, like that's just disgusting. What God would be wrapped in swaddling bands and laid in straw, that like seriously, that's his that's his real problem. Um it's the same as the problem actually of the Arians of decades before, who Athanasius was fighting against, who um had the same sort of philosophical issue. Um God, they said is unoriginate, uncreated. He can't he can't have a beginning. There's no way that he could be a son of any kind, because God, just by definition, is uncreated, ingenerate. And so they they in the in the end kicked the person of the son out of divinity altogether, because just being a son being begotten even by the father, let alone of Mary, like it that just cannot fit with my precooked definition of God. Uh you could say what Nestorus is doing a little bit down the line is exactly the same, he's got exactly the same problem. He's just snipping out Jesus in a different way, right? Instead of saying the son isn't divine, he says, Okay, the son is divine, but this human thing that has to be a separate man. That's the son of Mary, and that's the one who gets born, who gets hungry and tired, who suffered and died on the cross. None of that for Nestor has happened to God the Son. That's all on the Son of Mary, this man Jesus. So that as you say, the divine is insulated from all.
SPEAKER_02Goodness me. Have you ever thought about how your bank uses your savings? What if I told you there's a fully regulated Christian bank that aligns your money with your faith? When you open a Kingdom Bank savings account, you help to provide vital mortgages for churches, Christian ministries, and gospel workers who might struggle to secure one elsewhere. Whether saving for yourself or on behalf of your church, your savings will support Christian ministries across the UK. And when you're ready to take your money out, you get it back with interest. If your spending and giving reflect your faith, shouldn't your savings as well? Open a savings account with Kingdom Bank today and put your money where your heart is. Visit Kingdom.bankslash speaklife. Kingdom Bank is a member of the FSCS and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. So we've got Nicaea, which was the council that sort of Athanasius contributes to, and he kind of is victorious in sort of the fight against the Arians, and they say, no, no, no, the Son is the begotten, the only begotten of God who is fully God, and he's of one substance with the Father, and the Spirit as well. We have Father, Son, and Spirit in Nicene and Constantinople, these kind of councils in the fourth century. And then, as you say, Nestorius again finds it awkward to encounter God wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. And so instead of denying that the Son is outside the divinity club, he kind of says, Oh, there's this protrusion from the divinity club. And there's this the human nature of Jesus that's sort of protruding outside, outside of what is divinity. He is uncertain of the being able to call Mary the mother of God. Mary's just the mother of Christ, the human nature. The divine nature is on the inside of this divinity club, the human nature is on the outside. And at that point we've split Jesus. Um we have kind of the man Christ Jesus and the divine you know son. Um where do you find resonances with that today? Um I think in my own thinking, very often, I'll split Jesus in my own thoughts. And there's there's the humanity of Christ and the divinity, as though the divinity is um a radically separate thing from what we see in Jesus of Nazareth walking around. Where where do you see that in your own kind of spiritual life? But where do you also see it in kind of contemporary church life as well? Well, a good question.
SPEAKER_01Um, one of the things Nestorius did, which um is quite striking, is something that probably all of us have done in one way or another, which is basically to wade through the gospels and sort of divide up the actions of Jesus um according to what we think we have already decided would be appropriate for divinity and what would be appropriate for humanity. And um the stories did that in exactly the way we might very well do ourselves. So Jesus hungry, tired, uh Jesus certainly suffering, um, weeping at the grave of his friend. Well, that's all that's all human and frankly too weak for for God to do. So it's almost like at that at those points, if you imagine you've got those two sons under the under the blanket, one of them is really doing all the work at that point, but then they switch places when Jesus walks on water or or heals somebody or casts out a demon or something like that. So he was reading through the gospels and splitting up the actions of Christ according to what he thought already divinity and humanity were, um, which it seems to us like oh well, yeah, we can see why he might have done that, and we might do that ourselves. But as soon as we do that, you're left with questions about so who is involved in the most important moments of Christ's life? You know, who is it who is suffering and dying on the cross for me? Is it is it God or is it some man? Like whose Nestorus language, by the way, was that um God the Son assumed the man Jesus. They almost had a in fact he spoke quite quite as if they had a relationship together, they agreed to work together for a time.
SPEAKER_02Gosh.
SPEAKER_01Um speaks of them in in a gracious conjunction. Um, so it's very much like a partnership, like a business partnership for a time. And so you're left with a question if we read the gospels like the stories did, um who is the one doing all of this stuff for us? Um, so that's one thing. I guess the kind of thing that just crops up often in our our praying, uh our just our way of speaking sometimes would be things like Jesus left his divinity in heaven and he came to live just like one of us, and he was empowered by the Holy Spirit and relied upon the Father, and for that time on earth, it's like he was just like you or me, and therefore we ought to try and follow uh what he does and just be like him. And that all sounds quite pious, sounds on the face of it, quite an encouraging thing, like, well, Jesus is just like you, you could be filled with the Spirit and be just like Jesus. But hold on a second, did you say Jesus left his divinity in heaven? What does that mean? Like, what what what did what where does that come from? How do you even speak about that in a meaningful way? Uh that's not an unpopular thing to hear about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and then even and then he he might leave his humanity down on earth as he ascends back to heaven, and then well, if he if he can if Jesus brings me into his relationship with the Father, then I'm I'm left as far from Jesus as I ever was in that sense.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. It's almost as if Jesus goes back to the Son almost goes back to being God, uh reverting to type, um, which you know for me thinking of myself as a as a young Christian, um, that was the scary thought. You know, Jesus Jesus has done his kind, compassionate bet on earth, and now he's reverting to being lofty, transcendent, distant, disapproving, and so maybe I'm in trouble. Right.
SPEAKER_02So this is this is a big problem, and uh it's it's not as though uh Nestorius is just a 1600-year-old problem. It's it's a problem that that all of us have in our hearts as as we wrestle with who is Jesus and am I really being brought to God um as I commune with Jesus. Um so let's let's hear how did Cyril combat this? You talk about um Jesus as being one Lord Jesus Christ, and then you talk about uh God, and then you talk about salvation. So, so like take it take us through that. How how is Cyril going to skewer this heresy that needs skewing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the um the way this all kind of blew up, so Cyril had been um watching Nestorius quite carefully, along with a couple of his friends who were saying the same sort of stuff. And a bunch of monks wrote to Cyril to say, could you please intervene and help us out here? Because this it seems off to us and we we're not happy. And um actually some of Nestorius's own monks, you know, who were kind of in his you know his staff team, were would joke about him, and they bait I think in their joke they got to the heart of what Cyril would say. Um so they their joke about Nostoris was that he was like quite a stuffy, um, picky academic kind of brain, and he apparently would used to say in all of their kind of discussions, he would often say, or strictly speaking, dot dot dot, you know, kind of a little bit patronizing, and his monks joked about him behind his back, if Mary is not, strictly speaking, the mother of God, then her son is not strictly speaking, God. And that's basically the point that Cyril picks up, um, and he does he does it in a slightly less uh cheeky way, but he basically says, if it isn't God the Son, who has come down to us, if it's not him who is the acting person in the life of Christ, then we have not been saved by God, but just by one of us. And one from among us has sort of risen up and been exemplary and brilliant, been in that kind of special business partnership with God the Son, but we have not been saved by God, and therefore we can't really come close to God. In fact, I think he would say God has never really come near to us at all. There is almost like no meeting between humanity and divinity at all. And that's basically where I think he went in hard on the stories. Um, they talked a lot about well, how should we speak about Christ being human and divine? And um, there's a lot to be said about their discussion on that. Um, that's where probably most of the historical discussion centres around how do you speak about that in the right way, these two natures that come together in one person, how do you do that? But the the theological freight, and I think Cyril's um real concern is it has to be the story of God coming down to us in Christ, and not us reaching up to God through one of us. That's that's really the bottom line.
SPEAKER_02That is so helpful, yeah. Right. Now I love the way that you're framing this, Dan, because you're not saying, let's go with Cyril, because I guess he was one of the good guys, and Nestorius is the guy who wears the black hat, and we all know that we want to be Orthodox theologians, and so let's get our Christology right, we'll tick that box. You're actually saying this is about the gospel, this is this is about who is Jesus and the good news of him entering the fullness of our humanity that we might share in all that is his. So it's a it's a kind of a gospel issue. But the way we think of Cyril nowadays is well, he kind of knocked a heresy on the head, and we have come up with or we we have established a language around Christology that says um Jesus Christ is one Lord Jesus Christ, he is one person with two natures. Um can you just help uh help us to understand what those words mean? What in what way is he one person, and what way uh uh is he two natures, and and what even is a nature?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that's a good question. Um the fundamental difference between Cyril and Nestorius was you remember that for Nestorius he he has to think of Jesus as being the son of Mary and the Son of God under a sh under a sheet so it looks like one person. Um but it's actually two persons behind the scenes, so much so that they can relate to each other, um, have conversations, agree to work together. For Cyril, he's saying it's one person, there's only one person active here, but he's in two natures. And what he means by that, and uh the terminology was the subject of a lot of discussion at the time, and was for centuries, what he really means by that is a nature is um the makeup of a thing, how how it hangs together and works. So he would say this that the Son of God has an eternal divine nature, that is the reality of who and what the Son is. In that nature, Cyril would say he can't suffer or die. But as soon as he takes and adds to himself a human nature, now that same son, that one person, can do things that are appropriate for a human nature to do, like suffer and die. Um what's really important is, and the church came to clarify this, is that only persons can act and do things. Natures don't act and do things. Um persons act according to their natures. So it's human nature to be hungry and thirsty, but only a human person can eat and drink. And that just helps us get clarity because sometimes people will say, well, Nestorius was just trying to emphasize the human nature of Christ. No, Nostorius was wanting to say that the human Jesus was a different son, different person to the son of God. Um Cyril's saying there's one person who's now acting according to two natures, and they're both complete and true at the same time in one, and he is perfectly both.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. Very well put. Yeah, and he comes down to us in a salvific action, but he also comes down to us in order to reveal God to us. Um, I think I guess salvation and and revelation kind of go hand in hand in the Bible. You know, it's it's the saved who know God, and to know God is to be saved by God. John 17, 3, for instance, Jesus says this is eternal life, uh, that they know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. Um so salvation and and knowledge of God go hand in hand. Tell us about um those two things. So Christ comes down in order to save us, but Christ comes down also in order to reveal God to us. How does that work?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so to speak about salvation first, we could um we could just sort of ponder the way the early church generally thought about what salvation is. Uh, we often think about it um as a position we're put in with God. Um, you know, that I was once uh an enemy of God, I was once a rebel, and I once uh sinned against him and broke the law, um, which is true, of course, and now I've been counted right with God, I've been um now reckoned by Jesus' righteousness right before God, and I'm sort of moved my position. And all of that is is absolutely right biblical language, um, but there is a whole kind of stream of other language, other way of speaking about salvation in scripture as well, which really has to do with with fellowship with God and even union with him. Um so think about really that that long biblical picture of the believer or the church being united with Christ as a a bride and groom are united in marriage. Uh, think about uh the way Peter will speak about salvation as coming to partake in the divine nature, which is quite an astonishing phrase. We come to share in the life of God. Um Jesus' description of what it is to have eternal life here, John 17 3 is to know God, to have fellowship with him and his son. And so, as well as being a positional thing, how we perhaps Western evangelicals most often think of salvation, it's also like a relationship thing and a what are you thing. And what Cyril sees about the salvation that Jesus gives is if Jesus is God in the flesh, come down to us, he has taken on everything that we are, he's become fully, truly one of us, human body and soul, and everything that we are, he's he's taken it on to himself for the purpose that he can lift it. And Cyril's um Cyril's language around this is where basically he gets kind of most flowery and carried away and goes on long sentences, quite excitable, because he's saying, Look, he's come down to be what we are to lift us up to what he has, um, to take what um does not deserve the goodness and the kindness of God, uh, what is by its own nature dying and corrupted and sinful, and to raise it up, to heal it, to give it life, to bring it into intimate fellowship with the Father. And that that is a picture of salvation which is so much deeper than probably again what I grew up imagining. Um, that I deserved a slap on the wrist from God, Jesus has come in to take that slap for me, and now I'm back to sort of zero or back to square one, and let's hope I do a good job from here on in. The the picture of salvation there is well, I've I've I've just been this sort of passive, very helpless, sinful, useless person, but there has been this reaching down of Jesus who is God Himself, and He has just brought me up to everything that He is. So Cyril would love to riff on, particularly in his commentary on John's Gospel, um John 1 12, that he has the authority to bring us into adoption, to call God our Father. Someone who wasn't already the eternal Son of God would never have that authority. But Jesus, the Son of Mary, who is also God the Son, he he has the authority to give us what he himself really deserves and has, and all that belongs to him for eternity, he he includes us now with with him in it, which is a wonderful deep picture of salvation.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah, yeah, and then the revelation point, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. I think that then that then tells you the second part of the question. Cyril says, and I love this, he says, it's actually more proper to call God father than it is just to call him God. Which I think is quite a startling thing to say. He says, uh his words are this um if you if you refer to him as God, you you you're calling him, yeah, he's the Lord of all. Like we know what the word God means, sure. He says that's right. But he says it's more proper to call him father, because when you call him father, he says you're touching on the his most essential attribute, because you're saying this is the God who eternally has a son at his side, who by giving life and love and glory to his son, that that is who God is, and so you can call him God, and it's that's true, but when you look at God through the lens of Jesus and not by your precooked definitions, you come to see a God who is essentially a loving, life-giving father, and so adoption by God's grace, that really that really is the sort of thing that kind of God would want to do. It's not an incidental arrangement that he's put in place, which is which is kind of nice, but it who knows if it expresses anything of what he's like. Uh Cyril's saying, no, you look you look at the son and see the father, you're at the heart of what it is to be God.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Wow. Which is uh a hundred years on from what Athanasius said to Arius. He he said it is more pious and accurate uh to signify God from his son and call him father than it is to signify him from his works and call him unoriginate, you know, um unbegotten, the uncreated creator. It it is yeah, it is a deeper truth about God, that he is father than that he is uncreated creator, that he is God. That's but that's that's a really powerful way for Cyril to say it. It's yeah. Let it it is it is a deeper truth about him to call him father than it is to call him God. That has all sorts of implications, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's um it is probably the most profound thing, and I think I think Cyril is deliberately drawing on Athanasius. Um it seems that that Athanasius probably baptized Cyril's mum, so whether they knew each other or not, he certainly would have known Athanasius' work. He's deliberately picking up on that. I think he's seeing it is the most profound thing. He says the the mystery of Christ is so amazing that it it risks being not believed because it's just so wonderful.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01And I think this is kind of at the heart of all of this. He's he's saying you you can't wrap your mind around the idea that this really might this really is who God is and what he's like, and the the only way you can even kind of get to grips with it is just by this confrontation and collision of who Christ is, divine and human in one person, the the God who goes to the cross, God who's wrapped in swaddling bands, and all of your human equipment and apparatus to try and comprehend God, you just have to sort of lay it down on the floor before Jesus and say, whatever else I think, and wherever else I go, I'm just gonna have to stick here, and you you can't you can't grapple with it on with you know on your own terms. It it you it risks being disbelieved because it's so wonderful. Um but that is really who God is, and it is only in Christ that we see that.
SPEAKER_02That is really quite beautiful. As you know, Dan, we've got a little introduction to the Christian faith called 321, where uh people can go now, they can go to 321course.com and they can start an account and it's free and they can get in. And there are four major sections to 321. There's Jesus, he's our guide, and then he shows us who God is, what the world is, and who we are. Jesus, God, world, you. And Jesus shows us the threeness of God, the two-ness of the world, the oneness of you. I want you now, Dan. I want you to be uh chat GPT, um put yourself into Cyril mode. Okay, so Cyril GPT. And and uh with all with all your reading around Cyril and the sorts of things that he says, what's what's your best Cyril impression of how he would lead people through Section 1? That Jesus is our way to understand everything, including God, the world, and you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, he would say that in Jesus we have the God who has stepped into the world in all its darkness and brokenness, and in the conditions of it. Human life, a beautiful, compassionate, kind life, which is exposed to the depths of darkness and suffering and betrayal and injustice. Jesus has shown us the life of God worked out really in this world where we are, and in every part of his life, right from the womb of Mary through to sweating blood in the garden and hanging on the cross, we are seeing the eternal son being truly himself in his eternal relationship with the Father, kind of overflowing in this in this new human way that's just never happened before. And he's showing us two things there. One, who God really is. God is not human, but now in this human life, we're seeing God. This is the love and the life and the beauty of God on display. He would eat Cyril would even say, The cross is glory. The cross is the glory of God. And as he does that, he's also showing us, um, Jesus is showing us what it a true human life is like. Um, a a a fully orbed uh a humanity that has experienced the heights and the depths, but in perfect relationship with God the Father, filled with the Spirit, and gone to the depths, only to be raised to the heights, and that in Jesus we can know exactly what it is to be truly human. Uh, he has become what we are so that we could become what he is. Uh, we don't transform into being God, that's not that's not what a real human does, but as humans we can come to share in the life of God through and in the sun, um, to the point where Cyril says, but in basically, Jesus doesn't give us just any old relationship with God, but he he gives us his own relationship with God. Um, and that is in a way, it's like the prototype humanity to to be like and in and included in the sun. So in Jesus, he it's like he is the place where God and humanity meet, and he perfectly shows us both what is God truly like and what is true humanity like. He is the way, the truth, and the life.
SPEAKER_02Brilliant. We're gonna we're gonna delete uh section 10321. We're just gonna drop that in, and that's that that'll be what people get from now on. Uh on the Jesus section. And then Jesus shows us God, the world and you. He shows us the threeness of God, and the the point about the threeness of God is God is a loving union of three Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Um, what are some particularly Syrilign ways of putting that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he um he speaks very much about um the Trinity, it's one of his his biggest emphases actually. Um He speaks particularly about the way that the the three persons act always in complete unity. And he says that the Father achieves everything that he purposes through the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit. And um that's not a particularly unusual way of speaking. Um, a lot of the church fathers would speak that way about uh the the kind of the working of the Trinity. Um, what I think that highlights though, particularly for Cyril, is um again this this feature that has been so precious to me. Whatever we're seeing the Son doing, it's not like he's off on his own project that the father is maybe approving of but not that involved in. Um it's a it's a a perfect expression of the father's heart because the the son is simply doing what the father has given him to do, and he's doing that in the power of the spirit, whom the father has sent him in, and with. So there's the the beautiful unity of the Trinity means that what you see in that human life of Christ really is a reflection of the heart of God the Father, uh, and so what we see of the triune God in our salvation is a reflection of the triune God in himself, right? Right.
SPEAKER_02And so if you want to see an image of the Trinity, you you don't have to get an icon of you know, Rublev's icon or whatever, you like you don't you and you don't need to imagine a kind of a heavenly group hug or whatever. Um the icon of the trinity is Christ. You know, he he he is the image of the invisible God filled with the spirit, and and therefore, yeah, you want to see the trinity. Look at Jesus. Um brilliant. So Jesus reveals the threeness of God, he also reveals the two-ness of the world. So the the the the point in 321course.com is the world is shaped by two representatives, Adam and Jesus, Jesus being the second Adam. Um, does does Cyril make much of that, especially as he's talking about sort of human nature and that kind of thing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he does. He um he has a wonderful passage where he talks about the incarnation of Jesus uh being uh like the the comparison of those two things all in one. Um so he'll say he'll say um amongst other images, he'll say, in the incarnation, Jesus becoming flesh, we see the wound together with the cure. Oh so you see the suffering of Jesus, and you're like, that is everything that's wrong with humanity. You see the judgment of Christ on the cross, you're like, that is what we deserve. But then you see Jesus' life and power that floods out to heal and uh raise the dead and everything, and his own resurrection, and you say that's and that's exactly what we need. And so the two-ness of the world is almost captured in the person of Christ as well. Um, he he shows us uh both our problem and its solution.
SPEAKER_02Love it. And then the whole point of it is that he becomes what we are, that we might become what he is, and that's the truth about you. You are born one with Adam, and the call of the gospel is be one with Jesus. How does Cyril talk about union with Christ?
SPEAKER_01I think it's maybe the big theme of his. Let me read to you something from him. Is that okay? Yeah, please. This is this is a little quotation from him. I ought I ought to have given you a chunk of his own words by now. He says this the Son, by his authority, gives what belongs to him alone by nature and sets it forth as a common possession. We became participants in him through the Spirit, as the natural Son gave us power to become children of God, thereby introducing the idea of adoption and grace. John goes on without danger to say they were born of God. This is to show the magnitude of his grace toward them, since he gathers, as it were, what is alien to God the Father into a natural kinship and raises what is servile to lordly nobility because of his fervent love towards it. So it's got that idea of us who who are low, low and nothing, really, being lifted up into the the place of God the Son, in the Father's heart, um to be filled with the Spirit, to be adopted as children whom he loves, and all of that is really it's Christ's, it's not ours, but in Jesus, united to him, we we have all things.
SPEAKER_02That is so beautiful. That is so beautiful. And um yeah, one thing people can do uh from here is they can go to 321course.com and find out more about that. Um, but uh another thing people should definitely do is uh go out and get Cyril of Alexandria, his life and impact. Um Dan, what do you what do you hope that this book will do as people read this and hopefully you know discuss it with others and get a conversation going about the Lord Jesus?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh I I finish the book by saying I hope that when people read Cyril, and that's really the point of my book, is just to get people to go back to read Cyril um as much as you can. Um he has such a a great vision of Christ, and uh my my sort of ending thought in the book is it's not just a bigger picture of Jesus, which it is, for me, it was a mind-stretching picture of Jesus to imagine humanity and divinity in a person, you know, to think about um all of the implications of seeing there is God the Son in the flesh on the cross, well, there is God the Son being born of Mary, that's a big vision of Jesus, which is it's amazing, and it does cause you to worship and be in awe of God. But I think for me the deeper thing is this is a good vision of Jesus, it's a better vision of the God He reveals than I think I naturally imagine. Um because if this is God who's come down to save us, if this is God living out his life in the conditions of a humanity that I get and know, then that is the most beautiful, hope-giving, comforting reality that you could possibly imagine. And so my my prayer is for anyone who reads it, yeah, you get a bigger vision of Jesus, but you get a a better vision of him as well that fills your heart with joy.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. There is no one like him. Um so the book is out now with Christian focus. Um, if people want to catch up more with some of your stuff, and perhaps even go even deeper with some of these uh great uh theologians from the past, I know you're part of Union Theology as well. Um let us let us know a little bit about that as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, at Union we do a bunch of things um which are all connected. One is we have Union School of Theology. So if you want to study theology in any way, right from sort of small online independent video courses right right up to PhDs, you know, roll up roll up. You know, we we would love to hear from you. Ust.ac.uk. We have publishing, so we are um just a couple of years actually to producing books, but these are books for everyday Christians, um, hopefully to help you just delight in the Lord and know him better. And we've got a whole range of books. Um we work with people who are planting churches, um, we want to help particularly fund church planters and get new projects started up and help people revitalize churches. And so we have a whole network of people who are working on uh it's called Union Mission, but that's really just helping people plant churches, um particularly in places where there are not churches yet. And then we also have a program which is um for people who are studying theology at an advanced level, people doing perhaps like end of master's degree or inter PhDs, we want to get alongside um theologians and help them to be scholars who aren't just in it for academic reasons but who want to serve the Lord and bless the church with what they're doing. So um it's kind of a ministry all around growing leaders and growing churches, and so if any of that um is you know resonates with you what you're doing in your ministry um or in your Christian life, what you need, we would love to help.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic.
SPEAKER_01And so they can go to ust.ac.uk, is that the best place? Yep, or maybe more generally, union theology.org. That will be that the kind of the central portal for the school UST if you're interested in studying ust.ac.uk, but to see a bit of an overview and get a sense of everything at union theology.org.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's been a really rich chat, Dan, and I hope that uh everybody listening in will take uh some next steps with this because it can change your life. Uh Dan Haymes, thanks so much for joining me.
SPEAKER_01Thanks so much, Dan. It's been a pleasure.