What is The Monophysite Heresy And Why It's Important To Know About It?

What is The Monophysite Heresy And Why It’s Important To Know About It?

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What is the monophysite heresy and why is it important for us to talk about it? Reading the book of 1 John made me realize how important it is to be familiar with  the second person of the trinity, notably Jesus Christ. If you don’t know the true identity of Jesus Christ, then you don’t really know Him. Let me be more clear about what I’m trying to convey. Is the Jesus you believe in, the one described in the Bible, or do you believe in a Jesus of you own creation?  John found this topic so important that he wrote 1 John under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to refute the multiple misrepresentations of Jesus in his own days. The gnostic teacher Cerinthus was presenting a false Jesus that was only a mere man who gained the god -like status on the day of his baptism, and pretty much lost it before he went to the cross. So John wrote chapter 5 of the book of 1 John to specifically refute that heresy as he confirmed that the Jesus he ( John ) was preaching came by water and blood. I dedicated a whole video on this affirmation by John to explain what he meant in those words , see video below

The false representations of Jesus did not stop after John. Many more heresies arose after the days of the apostles. We already talked about Sabellius modalism a couple of weeks ago, and also briefly mentioned Arius and his heresy ( He argued that Jesus was created ). Arius can be considered the father of the modern day Jehovah’s witnesses. Another destructive heresy that arose in the 5th century was the Monophysite heresy, and I want to dedicate some time to explain what it is.

The monophysite heresy didn’t recognize the dual nature of Christ by not making the distinction between his human nature and his divine nature. It portrayed Jesus as a deified man or a humanized god. It didn’t recognize the human nature as truly human and the divine nature as truly divine. Let me give you a quote from the late Dr RC Sproul on this heresy,
The Monophysites claimed that Jesus did not have two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, but only one nature. That one nature was neither completely divine nor completely human. It was, depending on how one looked at it, a deified human nature or a humanized divine nature. This heresy was very serious for two reasons. It denied, on the one hand, the full deity of Christ. On the other hand, it denied the real humanity of Jesus. Against that, the Council of Chalcedon declared that Christ was vere homo, vere Deus, that is, “truly man and truly God,” having two natures in one person.
Source: Ligonier.org
We need to understand that When the word became flesh, the human nature was added to the divine nature. The second person of the Trinity added the human nature to the divine nature. So when Jesus walked on earth, the divine nature retained all His attributes ( omniscience, omnipresence, infinity, omnipotence, eternality ) and the human nature was also truly human, in the sense that Jesus in his human nature couldn’t be in two places at the same time, in his human nature Jesus hungered, was tired and died touching that nature. But the divine nature wasn’t subjected to any of these limitations because it is divine. The monophysite heresy was very dangerous because it created a mixture of these two natures and made it one nature , neither truly divine nor truly human ,but as a deified man or humanized god. This is why it was important for the church to refute this heresy as the council of Chalcedon.