This may be difficult to follow, but I am obliged to try explaining it: Many of the controversies and theological debates of the Early Church Fathers were inherently false from both sides. That’s because they were asking the wrong questions. Seeking to nail down precise theological (intellectual) definitions for some things is inherently evil. For example, the question of how Jesus was both human and divine is the wrong question. It’s enough to know simply that He was.
Way back in my college days, someone said something that grabbed my soul: “The Bible is an Eastern document. Jesus was an Eastern man and Christianity is an Eastern religion.” The speaker went on to define what he meant, specifically referring to the Ancient Near East (ANE) and it’s unique philosophical assumptions. It’s not that ANE scholars were unaware of the kind of reasoning we got from Plato and Aristotle, but that they regarded it as a juvenile pursuit. You weren’t allowed to sit in the council of adult sages until you got all that stuff out of your system.
Even today, we recognize in human development that abstract reasoning typically becomes possible starting around age 12. And who hasn’t been forced to put up with the arrogant pontifications of smart-ass teenagers? Once they discover abstract logic, their intellect tells them they can understand everything. And they resolutely refuse to climb out of that concrete fortress in order to understand moral logic, which is an entirely different level of operation. Some psychologists recognized long ago that clear moral conviction is the pinnacle of human development, and a level to which few humans ascended. Psychology will never lack for people who need help just understanding reality.
Part of the reason for that is because Western Civilization denies that moral reasoning can be separate from mere abstract logic. It’s a cultural bias that holds us all back from the level of maturity that the ANE sages demanded. That’s why, in the Bible for example, a man was socially insignificant until he was over 30. The first 15 years of life bring you to abstract logic, and it takes another 15 years of experience to realize that such logic cannot answer all the questions, nor even ask the right questions.
The Apostle John saw it coming. His Book of Revelation indicates this, but oddly enough, it’s the abstract reasoning of later Christian scholars that buried the Hebrew outlook of that book. Once he passed from the scene, the Hellenized rationalism of the Pharisees also took over the majority of the Early Church scholars. All of those controversies starting after 100 AD were the result of their increasing distance from the Hebrew philosophical outlook of Jesus and the Old Testament.
When you try to nail down with intellectual precision the way in which the Messiah could be both divine and human, you are already outside of what the Messiah taught. It’s the wrong question. What we should be asking is what following Jesus demands of us. And the only way you can understand any of that is to have a direct encounter with Him as the Holy Spirit. You have to meet God face to face in your soul. The result of that engagement should resolve a lot of juvenile control-seeking logic, because that logic demands things God does not grant to any human. All that matters is the burning call in your soul to serve the Lord.
From that foundation, you end up taking an entirely different path from trying to satisfy the curiosities of fallen men. You realize that, the Nestorian Controversy for example, is sheer stupidity on both sides. That debate was an attempt to pin down the question of how it was Jesus could have been divine and human at the same time. It’s pretty much the turning point of the split between the West and East in terms of Church History. Both sides were wrong; I reject Western and Eastern Christianity together.
Not in the juvenile sense of trying to create a separate thing, of refusing to use their terminologies, etc. Rather, I tend to ignore what both demand. I refuse to worry about whether either one will accept me. They do not represent my Savior; they are both a departure from His teaching. Jesus was a Hebrew man with a Hebrew philosophical approach, and neither West nor East will accept His fundamental intellectual outlook. Yes, we can know about the Hebrew mystical approach, and we can use it today. And using it puts you outside the mainstream historical traditions of conventional Christian religion.
Knowing Jesus is not an intellectual position; He’s a Person. You get to know Him by hanging around Him, and the only way you can do that is to turn inward in prayer and contemplation. Granted, we do need some cues as to what to look for, and that is a very large body of instruction helping us to unlearn both Western and Eastern false teachings. Both of them assume the answer lies in the intellect. The Hebrew outlook is different; it says the answer lies in your heart.
