Is John MacArthur a Nestorian?

[erickinho1bra]

Hi yall,

What do you guys think about this video from RedeemedZoomer?

He's not the only one I've seen accuse MacArthur of being Nestorian but he may be the latest.

Do you think Nestorianism is heretical? I know MacArthur affirms the hypostatic union but apparently so did Nestorious.
Do you think MacArthur is right to say that those that say "the blood of Christ is the blood of God" are heretics? (https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/80-44/the-blood-of-Christ)

Do verses like Acts 20:28 allow us to say that God shed His own blood for us?

This may be tangential but can we say that Mary is the Mother of God since she gave birth to Jesus Christ who is God?

 

[ZackF]

Calvin was accused of Nestorianism. I have not seen the video but I have developed a skeptical posture towards suggestions of Nestorianism towards anyone.

 

[SeanPatrickCornell]

... What do you guys think about this video from RedeemedZoomer?

I don't think much about RedeemedZoomer at all and am not really interested in his opinion on JMac.

 

[erickinho1bra]

Calvin was accused of Nestorianism. I have not seen the video but I have developed a skeptical posture towards suggestions of Nestorianism towards anyone.

Just because Calvin was falsely accused of Nestorianism doesn't mean other accusations can't be legitimate. I'd be curious to see what you think of the video. It's only a few minutes long.

I don't think much about RedeemedZoomer at all and am not really interested in his opinion on JMac.

Well even if you don't like him, he can still be right.

If you don't want to give your thoughts on RedeemedZoomer or John MacArthur, would you mind answering the other questions I asked please?

 

[retroGRAD3]

Not worth the time to watch anything from Zoomer in my opinion.

 

[Jack K]

Most YouTube videos using a thumbnail that's a picture of a famous preacher next to the word "HERESY??" are best left unwatched. There are better ways to discuss the topic than to use scandal-suggestive clickbait.

As for the "blood of God" matter, the phrase is correct in a sense and is a beautiful gospel truth, but it is also subject to misunderstanding or confusion. A wise writer/preacher should usually explain a bit when he uses that phrase—or if he corrects its misuse. But if he fails to explain, that shouldn't make him a "HERETIC??" on YouTube.

 

[MyCrows]

Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. Acts 20:28

 

[RamistThomist]

Back in the day JMac said some Nestorian things, but I think he walked it back. I wouldn’t go to him for christology anyway

 

[paranymph]

I didn't watch the video, but the questions you bring up relate to what's called communicatio idomatum. It means that because the person of the Son has two natures, we can speak of the Son doing things according to either the human or divine nature. So, Acts 20:28 says that God purchased the church with his blood. We are attributing the shedding of blood to the person of the Son in his human nature (only). Likewise we can say that the Son knows all things according to his divine nature.

A Communication of Attributes | Reformed Bible Studies & Devotionals at Ligonier.org

Ligonier Ministries, founded by R.C. Sproul, exists to proclaim, teach, and defend the holiness of God in all its fullness to as many people as possible.

www.ligonier.org

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

Do you think MacArthur is right to say that those that say "the blood of Christ is the blood of God" are heretics? (https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/80-44/the-blood-of-Christ)

We need to address this point carefully. Of course, it is orthodox to say that the blood of Christ is the blood of God owing to the unity of the person and the communication of properties (Acts 20:28; Westminster Confession VIII.7). Some fundamentalists, however, asserted that Christ's blood belonged to his divine nature and was not human blood. Such a notion is inconsistent with Christ being fully human. I recall hearing that John MacArthur "denies the blood" in certain fundamentalist circles many years ago. They meant that he denied the blood belonged to Christ's divine nature rather than his human nature.

 

[EvanF]

Nestorius was accused and condemned of denying the simultaneous unity, divinity, and humanity of Christ's person. Regardless of the opinions of reformed teachers throughout history as to his actual guilt or the right judgment of his condemnors (some of whom, including Cyril, were non-Chalcedonian miaphysites), what is affirmed by all is that anyone who actually does deny the simultaneous unity, divinity, and humanity of Christ's person is a heretic.

When MacArthur responds to a claim that the blood of Jesus was something more than ordinary human blood by saying,

"It’s heretical to call the blood of Jesus Christ the blood of God, and it demonstrates a failure to understand what theologians have called the hypostatic union, that is the God-man union in Christ."

he is not denying the unity or divinity of Christ's person. He is clearly affirming the Definition of Chalcedon - "One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and concurring into One Person and One Hypostasis".

Jesus blood was natural human blood, not divine. If his blood were divine, he would be less than wholly incarnate man.

It's not a gotcha proof of heresy just to say that Jesus blood was not God's blood or that Jesus mother was not God's mother, even though statements such as these were indeed held up by some as evidence against Nestorius. Again, the essence of the heresy is denial of the union of total divinity and total humanity in the single person of Christ, not the denial of divinity of any single property of his person. The miraculous divinity of his person does not make his human nature miraculously divine, nor any of the properties that pertain to his human nature, such as the human blood that flowed through his human veins and the human woman of whom he was begotten as to the manhood.

 

[RamistThomist]

Jesus blood was natural human blood, not divine. If his blood were divine, he would be less than wholly incarnate man.

That's true but that's not the issue. Neither Cyril nor Nestorius were concerned that someone thought the blood would be divine. It comes down to the communication of properties. We Reformed say they are communicated of the person. WCF 8 cites Acts 20:28 on this very point. I know Jmac is a Dispensational, but this only heightens the fact that he is emphatically not Reformed.

And whether he understands Chalcedon is debatable. Chalcedon means far more than "fully God" and "fully man." How those properties are predicated is the issue..

7. Christ, in the work of mediation, acteth according to both natures; by each nature doing that which is proper to itself;a yet, by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes, in Scripture, attributed to the person denominated by the other nature.b

a. Heb 9:14; 1 Pet 3:18. • b. John 3:13; Acts 20:28;

Acts: to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood

 

[Ben_Leevey]

Do you think MacArthur is right to say that those that say "the blood of Christ is the blood of God" are heretics?

If this is Nestorianism, I think I'm Nestorian too. The Bible does not draw such a hard line as we tend to.

 

[SolaScriptura]

Lutherans think we're all Nestorian.

 

[Ben_Leevey]

Hi yall,

What do you guys think about this video from RedeemedZoomer?

He's not the only one I've seen accuse MacArthur of being Nestorian but he may be the latest.

Do you think Nestorianism is heretical? I know MacArthur affirms the hypostatic union but apparently so did Nestorious.
Do you think MacArthur is right to say that those that say "the blood of Christ is the blood of God" are heretics? (https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/80-44/the-blood-of-Christ)

Do verses like Acts 20:28 allow us to say that God shed His own blood for us?

This may be tangential but can we say that Mary is the Mother of God since she gave birth to Jesus Christ who is God?

This video sounds like Sproul's view on And Can It Be. He would not sing "that thou my God shouldst die for me".

Hi yall,

What do you guys think about this video from RedeemedZoomer?

He's not the only one I've seen accuse MacArthur of being Nestorian but he may be the latest.

Do you think Nestorianism is heretical? I know MacArthur affirms the hypostatic union but apparently so did Nestorious.
Do you think MacArthur is right to say that those that say "the blood of Christ is the blood of God" are heretics? (https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/80-44/the-blood-of-Christ)

Do verses like Acts 20:28 allow us to say that God shed His own blood for us?

This may be tangential but can we say that Mary is the Mother of God since she gave birth to Jesus Christ who is God?

Also interesting to note, I don't think he quoted scripture once.

 

[RamistThomist]

If this is Nestorianism, I think I'm Nestorian too. The Bible does not draw such a hard line as we tend to.

Acts 20:28 says "purchased with his blood," with the referent being God.

Who died on the cross? A divine person or a human dude?

 

[MW]

Jesus' blood is the blood of human nature, not of a human person. Attributing it to a human person is not Chacedonian; it is Nestorian.

The "thing" that was born of Mary was called the Son of God, Luke 1:35. Hence the blood is called the blood of the Son of God. And it is only as the blood of God's Son that it cleanseth us from all sin, 1 John 1:7.

 

[Pilgrim]

Some fundamentalists have had what some might consider weird or strange views about the blood. I wonder if MacArthur was reacting to that.

 

[RamistThomist]

Furthermore, strictly speaking, Nestorius never said there were two persons of Jesus. He said the two prosopa were united in one hypostasis. More importantly, that union was a moral union. So if you were to go to Nestorius and say, "Do you believe in a fully human and a fully divine in Jesus?" he could probably says yes. That is why accusations of "Nestorian" or "Monophysite" (and how many can gloss the distinction between monophysite and miaphysite?) are not helpful.

McGuckin has written the best book on it.

McGuckin on Natures

This ties in with my recent reflections on universals, natures, and metaphysics. This is from John McGuckin’s fine work on St Cyril. I applaud Perry Robinson for doing the legwork in putting…

tentsofshem.wordpress.com

So is Macarthur Nestorian? Probably. But I don't put much weight in it because neither he nor his critics really understand the issues at play. If he denies that a divine person died on the cross, then yes.

 

[Knight]

Yesterday, I finished Cyril's On the Unity of Christ. He is balanced in his defense against Nestorianism. In fact, stricter miaphysites might have more difficulty with the following than anyone else:

It is written: “So brethren, we have the boldness through the blood of Christ to go into the holy places by a new and living way which he has opened for us through the veil, that is his flesh” (Heb 10:19-20). Understand then how he says the flesh is his, and the blood is his, which he also calls “the veil,” and rightly so, for what the sacred veil did in the Temple, effectively covering up the Holy of Holies, this is what we can understand the flesh of the Lord does. The Word is made one with it, and in turn it masks the transcendent excellence of the eminence and glory of the Word from being gazed at as if laid bare to the inspection of all. This is exactly why some thought that Christ was “Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Mt 16:14). But the Jews who completely misunderstood his mystery spoke badly of him when they said: “Surely this is Jesus, the son of the carpenter? (Mt 13:55) How can he now say: I have come down from heaven” (Jn 6:42)? The deity is invisible by nature, yet he, who in his own nature is not visible, was seen by those on earth in our likeness, and God who is Lord appeared to us. This, I think, is what the divine David teaches us when he says: “God, our God, shall come openly and shall no longer be silent” (Ps 50:3 LXX).

 

[Elias_Amare]

I think, as Daniel and Chris point out, the accurate context is that John MacArthur is reacting to certain fundamentalist teachings.

After John MacArthur gave the sermon titled "The Blood of Christ," there was an I.F.C.A. meeting (6-26-89) where John MacArthur responded to his charges.
You can find the recorded audio here part 1 and part 2

 

[Ben_Leevey]

Acts 20:28 says "purchased with his blood," with the referent being God.

Who died on the cross? A divine person or a human dude?

The first.

 

[RamistThomist]

The first.

That's correct. Did this divine person have blood? Yes, I know it is from "the human nature," but it wasn't the human nature dying on the cross, but the divine person. There is a single subject Logos who is doing all the actions. That's why Acts references the blood of God.

 

[Ben_Leevey]

That's correct. Did this divine person have blood? Yes, I know it is from "the human nature," but it wasn't the human nature dying on the cross, but the divine person. There is a single subject Logos who is doing all the actions. That's why Acts references the blood of God.

Amen! Agree totally, and if that in Nestorianism then I'm Nestorian.

 

[RamistThomist]

Amen! Agree totally, and if that in Nestorianism then I'm Nestorian.

That is not Nestorianism. It is a rebuttal of Nestorianism. More to the point, that is not what Macarthur said.

 

[Pomopu]

@RamistThomist can you briefly explain the difference between mia/monophysitism? You mentioned the difficulty in glossing the difference earlier in the thread, and I'm not sure I could articulate it clearly, myself.

 

[RamistThomist]

Monophysite is not a term that Orientals gave themselves. Later Chalcedonians, many of whom would not have been in agreement with much of Cyril, used it to mean that the the divine nature absorbs the human nature like a glass of wine absorbs a drop of water.

Miaphysite means a specific hypostasis, the Logos, took on the properties of flesh. They would not cash it out between human nature and divine nature. For them, nature is a universal, and Jesus didn't take on the universal of the entire human race. He took on specific properties.

Severus of Antioch said in Christ after the union there is difference but not duality. Severus is operating with the older Athanasian view that physis = hypostasis, existent reality. Because there cannot be “two existent Jesuses,” there can only be one hypostasis in Jesus. His opponents, by contrast, are working with a newer, post-Basil the Great, understanding of hypostasis and ousia.

In other words, a substance, on the post-Cappadocian reading, is the common property of a class, be it divinity or humanity. The problem, as Severus sees it, is to form a particular hypostasis from two common universals. For, the common class of humanity would include all humans! Even worse, the whole Trinity would have assumed all of humanity!

Rather, following Gregory of Nazianzus, the whole Trinity “is above substance and above nature, and is not subject to these designations” (Allen, Severus of Antioch 85). Because substance is capable of division, we do not use substance (as such) to refer to the Trinity. The two “natures” are not “substances,” for they do not hold together many hypostases (87). Furthermore, because the two are not “substances,” divinity and humanity cannot create a new tertium quid (91).

 

[GulfCoast Presbyterian]

This is an "old" JMac controversy. The Bob Jones U fundamentalist crowd keep it stirred up. This might help with a bit of context: https://sharperiron.org/article/macarthur-and-blood-controversy. (Isn't it rich that MacArthur, a dispensationalist, complains his critics are "too literal.") I got asked about it from time to time by baptists from the church where I grew up who want to know why "Y'all Calvinists like Johnny Mac deny the blood of Christ?" This thread will thankfully help me to be much more articulate if I ever have to try to explain it again.

 

[erickinho1bra]

This is an "old" JMac controversy. The Bob Jones U fundamentalist crowd keep it stirred up. This might help with a bit of context: https://sharperiron.org/article/macarthur-and-blood-controversy. (Isn't it rich that MacArthur, a dispensationalist, complains his critics are "too literal.") I got asked about it from time to time by baptists from the church where I grew up who want to know why "Y'all Calvinists like Johnny Mac deny the blood of Christ?" This thread will thankfully help me to be much more articulate if I ever have to try to explain it again.

I think they're related but not exactly the same. I believe, the issue MacArthur was addressing was whether or not the literal shedding of blood is what accomplished our redemption or was it just the death of Christ on the cross. In the process of addressing that issue, he then goes on to make his quasi (or full-fledged) Nestorian comments about Christ's blood not being the blood of God.

Funny how trying to apparently address someone's faulty theology can expose your own faulty theology (at worst, or bad wording, at best).
MacArthur really doesn't like the term Theotokos though (cf. this sermon transcript). From the link:

In fact, Roman Catholics refer to her as Theotokos, God-bearer. They say she gave birth to God and thus is to be elevated and adored. She gave birth to God. That is a terrible misconception. She gave birth to Jesus in his humanity. She did not give birth to God. God was never born.

I get not wanting to endorse mariolatry but one can take it too far and go into other errors (Nestorianism, in this case). No Catholic thinks that Mary gave birth to God in His divinity. No RC or EO thinks thank Mary is the mother of God the Father and Holy Spirit or that she is existed before the triune God. To say they think that makes us Protestants look unlearned. Mary is the mother of God. To say that she did not give birth to God is a worse "misconception" than to say she did because Jesus is God. To deny the theology behind "theotokos" is to make light of the incarnation. As has been said, "God in the womb, God in the tomb"!

 

[Ben_Leevey]

That is not Nestorianism. It is a rebuttal of Nestorianism. More to the point, that is not what Macarthur said.

Okay. I must have been confused.

Well, if that is the case, then RC Sproul certainly had a Nestorian streak.