Category Archives: Theology

10 Things You Should Know About The Sovereignty of God

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Article: 10 Things You Should Know About The Sovereignty of God by Dr. Sam Storms (original source here)

Few things are more controversial among Christians than the sovereignty of God. Is God truly sovereign over everything, including calamity, natural disasters, death, and demons, or is his sovereign control restricted to those things we typically regard as good, such as material blessing, family welfare, personal salvation, and good health? Today we turn our attention to ten things we should all know about God’s sovereignty.

Before we begin, it’s important to distinguish between natural evil, which would include such things as tornadoes, earthquakes, famine (although famine can often be the result of moral evil perpetrated by those who devastate a country through greed or theft), floods, and disease. Is God sovereign over natural evil? Does he exert absolute control over these events in nature, such that he could, if he willed to do so, prevent them from happening or redirect their course and minimize the extent of damage they incur? Yes.

Moral evil has reference to the decisions made by human beings. Does God have sovereignty over the will of man? Can he stir the heart of an unbeliever to do his will? Can he frustrate the will of a person whose determination is to do evil and thereby prevent sin from happening? When a Christian does what is right, to whom should the credit and praise be given? And how is it possible for God to exert sovereignty over all of life without undermining the moral responsibility of men and women? These are the questions that find their answer in Scripture.

(1) Numerous biblical texts explicitly teach that God exerts complete sovereignty and meticulous control over all the so-called forces of “nature.” I encourage you to take time to read Psalms 104; 147:8-9, 14-18; 148:1-12. Also consider Job 9:5-10; 26:7-14; 37:2-24; 38:8-41. Other texts include:

“It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom; and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses” (Jer. 10:12-13).

“Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are you not he, O Lord our God? We set our hope on you, for you do all these things” (Jer. 14:22).

“I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither” (Amos 4:7).

“When he summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread . . .” (Psalm 105:16).

Jesus exercised this authority/sovereignty when he rebuked the storm on the Sea of Galilee, provoking this response from his disciples:

“And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. . . . And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:39-41).

Does this mean that God can put a halt to the destructive path of a tornado or redirect its trajectory, or that he can stop the waves of a tsunami? Yes.

(2) God is also sovereign over events that from our limited human point of view appear to be entirely random:
“The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33).

(3) His sovereignty extends to the affairs of our daily lives and the plans we make for each day:

“A man’s steps are from the LORD; how then can man understand his way?” (Proverbs 20:24)

“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21)

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. . . . Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:13-15).

(4) God is sovereign over both life and death. Many are ready to concede that God is sovereign over the beginning of life but they do not like the idea that God is sovereign over the time and manner of its end. But note the following:

“See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand” (Deuteronomy 32:39)

“The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up” (1 Samuel 12:6)

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:13-15). Continue reading →

The Father’s Bargain with the Son

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by John Flavel

Father: My son, here is a company of poor miserable souls, that have utterly undone themselves, and now lie open to my justice! Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them: What shall be done for these souls?

Son: O my Father, such is my love to, and pity for them, that rather than they shall perish eternally, I will be responsible for them as their Surety; bring in all thy bills, that I may see what they owe thee; Lord, bring them all in, that there may be no after-reckonings with them; at my hand shalt thou require it. I will rather choose to suffer thy wrath than they should suffer it: upon me, my Father, upon me be all their debt.

Father: But, my Son, if thou undertake for them, thou must reckon to pay the last mite, expect no abatements; if I spare them, I will not spare thee.

Son: Content, Father, let it be so; charge it all upon me, I am able to discharge it: and though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all my riches, empty all my treasures, (for so indeed it did, 2 Cor. 8: 9. “Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor”) yet I am content to undertake it.

Flavel: Blush, ungrateful believers, O let shame cover your faces; judge in yourselves now, has Christ deserved that you should stand with him for trifles, that you should shrink at a few petty difficulties, and complain, this is hard, and that is harsh? O if you knew the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in this his wonderful condescension for you, you could not do it.

Is God Simple or Complex?

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Persis Lorenti is a member of Grace Baptist Chapel in Hampton, VA where she serves as bookkeeper and deacon of library/resources. She blogs at triedbyfire.blogspot.com and out-of-theordinary.blogspot.com. You can follow her on Twitter @triedwfire.

Article: Classic Theism: Is God Simple or Complex? (original source here)

My Sunday school teacher posed this question during class a few years ago. The question surprised me because the answer seemed obvious. If God is so far beyond my comprehension, how could he be simple? Therefore, he must be complex, right? Wrong. The teacher was not referring to whether God was easily understood but rather to the doctrine of divine simplicity.

Simply stated, this doctrine teaches that there “is nothing in God that is not God.” [1] Nothing comprises God. Neither is there anything that lies behind or alongside him that provides the basis for his existence.[2] This is affirmed in the Westminster Confession 2.1 which states that God is “without body, parts, or passions.” The London Baptist Confession (LBC) 2.3 also adds “one God, who is not to be divided by nature or being.”

As a counter example, we learn in biology that all living things are composed of cells, which are made of several components. But in chemistry, we learn that those cellular components are made up of molecules, which in turn are made up of atoms of different elements. For years scientists believed that atoms were the building blocks of matter, but the search is not over. Physicists today are detecting particles smaller than a proton. Thus, we still don’t know what is the fundamental basis of matter. The physical universe also requires something outside of these necessary parts to put them together. But God is not like this. He cannot be subdivided or broken down into his essential building blocks. If that was the case, those parts would account for his being God and take the credit for his God-ness. He would also be dependent upon a maker apart from himself to combine those parts into “God,” but all that is in God is God. He just is.[3]

This may sound rather esoteric and only fit for the seminary classroom, but what about the average believer in the pew? Does simplicity make any difference at all? It does indeed, and here are a few implications of this doctrine.

– Simplicity safeguards our understanding of God. The Trinity is not three Gods (tritheism). Neither is God comprised of 1/3 Father, 1/3 Son, and 1/3 Holy Spirit (partialism). We confess One God in Three Persons. Simplicity is also the foundation of God’s independence and immutability. Complex beings are dependent on their parts and their maker, but as a simple being, God is dependent upon nothing. He will never change because then he would cease to be himself. Change also implies a lack of perfection as though he needed any improvement.[4] Continue reading →

How Do We Relate to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

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by Michael Horton, adapted from his new book, Rediscovering the Holy Spirit: God’s Perfecting Presence in Creation, Redemption, and Everyday Life.

What we meet in the unfolding biblical drama is not merely three “personas” but three concrete persons; not just three roles, but three actors. We encounter the Father as the origin of creation, redemption, and consummation, the Son as the mediator, and the Spirit as the one who brings every work to completion.

There are various ways of formulating this mystery:

1. The Son is the Father’s image; the Spirit is the bond of love between them. Consequently, in every external work of the Godhead the Father is the source, the Son is the mediator, and the Spirit is the consummator. Creation exists from the Father, in the Son, by the power of the Spirit; in the new creation Christ is the head while the Spirit is the one who unites the members to him and renews them according to Christ’s image to the glory of the Father.

2. Or we can say that the Father works for us, the Son works among us, and the Spirit works within us.

3. God’s works, both of creation and new creation, are typically described in Scripture as performed through speech, so we may also say it this way: Just as the Son is the Word of the Father and the Father (or the Father and the Son) breathes out the Spirit, all of the Father’s speech in the Son brings about its intended effect because of the perfecting agency of the Spirit. We hear the voice of the Father, but we behold God himself in the face of Christ. Jesus could even tell Philip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). But the Spirit is the one who brings about this recognition within us, as Jesus goes on to point out so clearly in the following verses (vv. 15–27). The Trinitarian reference is implied in 2 Corinthians 4:6: “For God [the Father], who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts [by the Spirit] to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

4. In the covenant of grace, the Father is the promise maker (Heb 6:13), the Son is the promise (2 Cor 1:20), and the Spirit brings about within us the “amen!” of faith (1 Cor 12:13).

5. Athanasius observed that “while the Father is fountain, and the Son is called river, we are said to drink of the Spirit.”

For it is written that “we have all been given to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor 12:13). But when we are given to drink of the Spirit, we drink of Christ; for “they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ” (1 Cor 10:4). . . . But when we are made alive in the Spirit, Christ himself is said to live in us: “I have been crucified with Christ,” it says, “I live, yet it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:19–20).

It is not different works but different roles in every work that the divine persons perform. This can be something like a paradigm shift not only in our thinking but in our worship, living, and mission. As we begin to discern the Spirit’s distinctive role across the whole canvas of biblical revelation, we begin to recognize his distinctive role in our own lives.

Again, for emphasis: We will have a very narrow vision of the Spirit’s person and work if we identify him only with specific works (like regeneration and spiritual gifts) instead of recognizing the specific way he works in every divine operation.

In creation, redemption, and the consummation, the Spirit is the life-giver.

Did God Die on the Cross?

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sanders__fred_41059966622This is an excerpt from Fred Sander’s essay “Chalcedonian Categories for the Gospel Narrative,” from Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective (B&H Academic, 2007). Fred is a systematic theologian with an emphasis on the doctrine of the Trinity. He and his wife Susan have two children, Freddy and Phoebe. They are members of Grace Evangelical Free Church.

God Died on the Cross by Fred Sanders

In the days leading up to Good Friday, I’m going to post a few theological answers to questions I get every year around this time. The answers will be unblushingly doctrinal, so prepare to put your thinking caps on.

This little series isn’t mainly about getting the theology right for its own sake (though I’m strongly inclined to do that, because who wants to get the theology wrong?). It’s mainly to clear a few theological questions out of the way before the Good-Friday-to-Easter church sequence arrives.

My dream is that we could think hard about theology online during the first part of the week, and then have our thoughts in order before we experience the annual remembrance of the death and resurrection of Christ in the last part of the week in church. These posts are intended to clear away some theological confusions that might prevent intelligent participation in the life of the church.

The first one is what it means to say that God died on the cross. My answer is an excerpt from a book I edited about ten years ago:

In one of his hymns, Charles Wesley wrote: “O Love divine, what has thou done! The immortal God hath died for me!” This is a bold thing to say, because it claims so much: “God . . . died.” The Bible itself says it that bluntly in a few places, such as Acts 20:28, “God purchased the church with his own blood.” This is how the voice of faith speaks when it confesses what God has done. This is a good Christian sentence. When theologians get hold of stark, paradoxical statements like “God died,” they have an instinct to clarify what is being said. They do not want to remove the shock or the force (that would be very bad theology), but they do want to make sure that the true paradox rather than something else is being communicated. They want to rule out misunderstandings that either take away the shock, or substitute for it the fake shock of logical incoherence. Continue reading →

How to Distinguish Genuine Christianity from False Teaching

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Dan PhillipsBy Pastor Dan Phillips (original source cook, working as an investigator, hosting a talk show, IT education and support, and teaching in various institutions. He is a pastor, an author, and an international conference speaker. He has written two books: The World-Tilting Gospel (Kregel: 2011), and God’s Wisdom in Proverbs (Kress Biblical Resources: 2011). He was also one of the three contributors to the popular and influential blog, Pyromaniacs. He pastors Copperfield Bible Church in Houston, Texas, where he lives with his dear wife Valerie and two of their four children.)

Every Christian is called to contend earnestly for the faith delivered to the saints 2000 years ago (Jude 3) in Scripture alone (2 Timothy 3:15—4:4; Hebrews 2:1-4). There are various legitimate ways of doing this. Paul’s approach with the Colossian error is particularly instructive.

The Colossians had a sound beginning, learning the saving good news of Christ from Paul’s associate Epaphras (Col. 1:7). They had made a healthy start (Col. 1:4-6, 8).

But now a personable, dynamic individual had come with a strange mix-and-match set of doctrines. Like modern charismatics, he made much of his own experiences (2:18). He posed a real danger to these young believers (2:4, 8).

Paul’s way of responding is striking. He doesn’t name the man, or go into detail about his teachings. Instead, what Paul does is make a great deal about Christ and His salvation. He shows what a glorious Lord Jesus is, and what a great salvation Christ has accomplished (see all my online studies, starting here).

As promised last time, I want to do this same sort of thing in marking off genuine Christianity from false teachings. Get a hold of these points of distinction, and you’ll be prepared to resist error – or be delivered from the error that enslaves you.

1. Sound doctrine spotlights the person and work of Jesus Christ

This is a matter of emphasis. Christ saw all parts of the Old Testament as pointing to Him (Luke 24:27, 44) and said that the ministry of the Spirit would be to continue to glorify Him (John 16:14). Understood correctly, then, everything in the whole Bible tends to the glory of Jesus Christ, and to prompt us to center our lives around Him (Col. 2:6, 7, 10). False teaching always ends up focusing our attention elsewhere and has us chasing in a different direction.

2. Sound doctrine is based on the saving work of Christ, conveyed to us in the Gospel

It glories in every aspect of Christ’s work redeeming helpless, lost sinners (Romans 3—5; Ephesians 1—3; and on and on). Everything – whether issues of personal ethics, marriage, family, church life –is directly related to who Jesus is to us, and what Jesus has done for us (cf. Eph. 4:1—6:9). False teaching has little time for such matters, being obsessed instead with the esoteric, private experiences that only the false teacher and his movement has had or can provide.

3. Sound doctrine is really, really old

Age alone is no guarantee of truth. The germs of every heresy ever hatched were already prowling around in New Testament times. That said, two truths guide us: (1) our doctrine must be clearly taught in the Bible; and (2) someone must surely have seen something about it before today! The Bible contains every word we need from God. Believers have studied it closely for centuries. Is it possible that someone could catch something major that tradition blinded others to? Yes. But possible is not a synonym for likely! It is unlikely that an isolated, accountability-averse autodidact with his KJV will see what all his betters missed, despite their years of delving deep in the Hebrew and Greek texts. Spurgeon said a number of times, “There is nothing new in theology but that which is false.” The more I learn the Bible and history, the more I see this truth: every claim to a “new move of God” is probably neither new, nor of God. God said His last word to us long, long ago (Hebrews 1:1-2; 2:1-4). Continue reading →

Salvation Belongs to the Lord!

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spurgeon_chair-e1379528080265God’s Work in Salvation – Spurgeon – Edited by Alistair Begg

Salvation belongs to the Lord! – Jonah 2:9

Salvation is the work of God. It is He alone who quickens the soul “dead in…trespasses and sins,”1 and He it is who maintains the soul in its spiritual life. He is both “Alpha and Omega.”

“Salvation belongs to the LORD!” If I am prayerful, God makes me prayerful; if I have graces, they are God’s gifts to me; if I hold on in a consistent life, it is because He upholds me with His hand. I do nothing whatever toward my own preservation, except what God Himself first does in me. Whatever I have, all my goodness is of the Lord alone. Whenever I sin, that is my own doing; but when I act correctly, that is wholly and completely of God. If I have resisted a spiritual enemy, the Lord’s strength nerved my arm.

Do I live before men a consecrated life? It is not I, but Christ who lives in me. Am I sanctified? I did not cleanse myself: God’s Holy Spirit sanctifies me. Am I separated from the world? I am separated by God’s chastisements sanctified to my good. Do I grow in knowledge? The great Instructor teaches me. All my jewels were fashioned by heavenly art. I find in God all that I want; but I find in myself nothing but sin and misery. “He only is my rock and my salvation.”2

Do I feed on the Word? That Word would be no food for me unless the Lord made it food for my soul and helped me to feed upon it. Do I live on the bread that comes down from heaven? What is that bread but Jesus Christ Himself incarnate, whose body and whose blood I eat and drink? Am I continually receiving fresh supplies of strength? Where do I gather my might? My help comes from heaven’s hills: Without Jesus I can do nothing.

As a branch cannot bring forth fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can I, except I abide in Him. What Jonah learned in the ocean, let me learn this morning in my room: “Salvation belongs to the LORD.”

1) Ephesian 2:1
2) Psalm 62:2

Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility

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john-macarthur08What Is the Relationship Between Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility?

This excerpt is taken from None Other: Discovering the God of the Bible by John MacArthur.

The relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility is not instantly obvious, and at first glance it seems paradoxical. But Scripture offers us considerable insight into how these twin truths harmonize within the plan of redemption.

The first step in understanding the compatibility between God’s sovereignty and human will is to recognize that they are not mutually exclusive, and Scripture makes this absolutely clear. In God’s design, human responsibility is clearly not eliminated by God’s sovereign control over His creation. That’s true even though evil was included in His grand design for the universe even before the beginning of time, and He uses His creatures’ sin for purposes that are always (and only) good. Indeed, in His infinite wisdom, He is able to use all things for good (Rom. 8:28).

Consider the Lord’s opening statement in Isaiah 10:5: “Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger.” At first glance, this makes no sense. If Assyria is functioning as an instrument of God’s judgment, why is He pronouncing condemnation on the Assyrians? “Woe” is an onomatopoeic word (meaning the word sounds like what it means; in this case, a cry of agony) that warns of calamity or massive judgment to come. But how can a people come under divine denunciation and judgment while at the same time functioning as a rod of God’s anger? The rest of the verse says, “the staff in whose hand is My indignation.” Assyria, this pagan, godless, idolatrous nation, is the instrument of divine judgment against God’s own rebellious people.

In fact, the next verse says, “I send it against a godless nation [Judah, the southern part of the kingdom] and commission it against the people of My fury” (v. 6). The Jews are thus designated as the people of God’s fury. God holds Israel fully responsible for their disbelief; fully responsible for their idolatry; fully responsible for their rebellion and their rejection of Him, His Word, and His worship. So He commissions the Assyrians to come against them. Notice verse 6: “To capture booty, and to seize plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets.” That’s strong, decisive language.

Now here you have a divine decree in action. God grabs Assyria by the nape of its national neck and assigns it to be the instrument of His fury against the godless people of Judah who have rejected and rebelled against Him. And then He says in verse 7, “Yet it [Assyria] does not so intend, nor does it plan so in its heart.” Assyria is the instrument of God’s judgment—and the Assyrians themselves are clueless about it. It was never Assyria’s purpose, motive, or intention to serve God. They had no interest in the God of Scripture—they didn’t even believe in Him. Rather, Assyria planned in its own heart to cut off many nations. This was just another opportunity for the Assyrian power to knock off another neighboring nation, as they’d already done to Calno, Carchemish, Hamath, Arpad, Samaria, and Damascus (v. 9). Verses 10 and 11 depict Assyria’s confidence in its ability to conquer Judah: “As my hand has reached to the kingdom of the idols, whose graven images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria, shall I not do to Jerusalem and her images just as I have done to Samaria and her idols?” All Assyria knows is that it has destroyed other nations who, in its judgment, had greater protection and greater gods than the God of the Bible. The Assyrians simply intended to do to Judah what they had done to the rest of the nations. They thought they were acting in complete independence. They had no idea that God was using them as agents to deliver His judgment.

But does being instruments of divine wrath somehow exonerate them from responsibility for the evil inherent in their military policies? If this irresistible divine decree brings them to Israel, what culpability do they have for their actions? And yet Scripture is clear that they will be held accountable. Verse 12 says that when God has finished using Assyria as an instrument of His fury, “So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, ‘I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness.’” The Lord has already decreed that once He is done using Assyria, He will punish it for its sins. The very act that the Assyrians carried out under divine decree was an act of evil—so evil that God will turn on them and bring destruction on them. In God’s eyes, they bear full culpability for every part of their evil slaughter and destruction, even though they are fulfilling His divine decree. Continue reading →

Why Study Theology?

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theology03Why Study Theology?

Scottish pastor and theologian John Dick answered this penetrating query with seven profound responses. A better and more succinct answer would be difficult
to come by:

1. “To ascertain the character of God in its aspect towards us”

2. “To contemplate the display of his attributes in his works and dispensations”

3. “To discover his designs toward man in his original and his present state”

4. “To know this mighty Being, [which] is the noblest aim of the human understanding”

5. “To learn our duty to him, the means of enjoying his favor, the hopes which we are authorized to entertain, and the wonderful expedient by which our fallen race is restored to purity and happiness”

6. “To love him, the most worthy exercise of our affections”

7. “To serve him, the most honourable and delightful purpose to which we can devote our time and talents”

The Extra Calvinisticum

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visionKevin DeYoung: (original source but never fully contained within, the human nature.

The term was originally a pejorative label given by Lutheran theologians in their debates with Reformed divines over the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Whereas Lutherans affirmed the physical presence of Christ’s body in, with, and under the elements, Reformed theologians spoke of a real spiritual presence. In order to maintain their position (later termed consubstantiation), Lutherans argued that the attribute of omnipresence should be predicated not just of Christ’s divine nature, but also of his human nature.

Reformed theologians, by contrast, held to a different understanding of the communicatio idiomatum (communion of properties), insisting that what can be said about either nature can be said about the Person of the Son, but cannot be automatically predicated to the other nature. Consequently, the divine Logos is omnipresent, but Christ’s human body is not. In other words, the Son, even in his incarnate state, is able to live a divine life outside (extra) his human nature. Or as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it: “Since divinity is not limited and is present everywhere, it is evident that Christ’s divinity is surely beyond the bounds of the humanity he has taken on, but at the same time his divinity is in and remains personally united to his humanity” (Q/A 48).

While the doctrine may seem like unnecessary and overly precise doctrinal wrangling, the extra Calvinisticum is crucial for protecting a classic understanding of the incarnation. In fact, some have preferred the term extra Catholicum because even though the doctrine is attributed to John Calvin, it was clearly the position of church fathers like Augustine, Cyril, and Athanasius, and was taught throughout the Middle Ages. The extra is an important doctrine in that it safeguards the transcendence of Christ’s divine nature (i.e., it cannot be contained) and the genuineness of the human nature (i.e., it does not possess attributes reserved for divinity).

The extra also reminds us that in the incarnation “the Son did not cease to be what he had always been” (Wellum, God the Son Incarnate, 332). He continued to sustain the universe (Col. 1:15-17; Heb. 1:1-3) and to exercise his divine attributes together with the Father and the Spirit. When Mary conceived a child by the power of the Holy Spirit, the divine nature did not undergo any essential change. Better to say the Person of the Son became incarnate than to say the divine nature took on human flesh (for the latter suggests the divine nature changed in its essential properties).

All this means–because the divine nature did not undergo essential change–that in coming to earth, the Son of God did not abdicate his rule, but extended it. It also means–because the human nature was not swallowed up by the divine–that the Son’s earthly obedience was free and voluntary. In short, the extra protects a Chalcedonian understanding of the incarnation that Christ’s divine and human natures were indissolubly joined, yet “without confusion” and “without change.”