He’s been using these arguments for years. I try to avoid these discussions because of how he interacts with other human beings. Some of his spazzing is funny, sometimes it is not.
I did earlier responses here, when Jay was about to become Jewish.
https://bayouhuguenot.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/towards-a-christian-response-to-jay-dyer-part-1/
https://bayouhuguenot.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/towards-a-christian-response-to-jay-dyer-part-two/
I am going to try a rhetorical strategy here. Not one of my rebuttals to Jay will attack Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. In fact, when I explored EO, I was told to read the best scholarly literature on the topic. So pretend you are a Reformed person looking into Eastern Orthodoxy. You want to see the best of the Reformed writers refuted. Let’s see if that happens. Remember, an EO apologist, a good one anyway, can affirm everything I say in the following.
I understand he has other articles on monergism, Christology, etc. I might get to them later. I’ll be interacting with this article.
https://jaysanalysis.com/2010/04/11/reflecting-on-various-errors-in-calvinsm/
1. Sola Scriptura cannot be the foundation of true religion because the Protestant Bible has the wrong canon and therefore sola scriptura cannot be true (since it presupposes a correct canon)
Ask yourself: did he define sola scriptura? No, he didn’t. He asserted that it is false because Protestants have the wrong canon. But all sola scriptura says is the Bible is the final authority. That doesn’t have anything logically to do with the formation of the canon. Sola Scriptura might be wrong, but this doesn’t logically follow.
Calvinsim’s christology is generally Nestorian, and at best, quasi-Nestorian. This is because it makes the hypostatic union a product of the Incarnation — divine nature + human nature = person Jesus. Most Calvinists (like many westerns in general) .
He does have some quotes here. Only one of them is scholarly, and that is Charles Hodge, and Hodge is wrong here. Big deal. His other quote simply miss the mark. In any case Nestorianism teaches that two prospa come together in one prosopon. Reformed Christology, by contrast, confesses that the human nature was anhypostatic.
erroneously confess Jesus to be a “human person.” Turretinfan, as well as Gordon Clark and his disciples and other reformed giants like A.A. Hodge openly defend Nestorius and his views.
Well, there you have it. If Turretinfan is wrong, the whole project is gone.
The Calvino-Nestorian view of the Incarnation has all kinds of other flaws that flow from it. Most notably, Calvinists often confess a human man – Jesus – being damned by the Father at the cross. This is, to say the least, Nestorian, while the other option for Calvinists is to keep the orthodox confession of the sole subject being the Logos, but that leads to the conclusion that the Father damned His divine Son – therby splitting the Trinity. Either route the Calvinist takes, it can only be heretical.
Is that what Turretin, Vermigli, or Owen said? Real scholarship would have analyzed Reformed Scholasticism. Muller anyone?
Also flowing from this issue is the nature of salvation and problems for imputational theology. If no. 3 is correct in its analysis, then we also cannot rely upon a legal status – itself a created grace earned by a human-person-Jesus – to save us. We need an actual ontological change in our whole being
My human nature needs to be changed? What’s wrong with my human nature? Jay is starting to sound like a Calvinist. Anyway, whether imputation is true or not, union-with-Christ language is at home in the Reformed tradition. At this point Jay should have been analyzing Nevin.
Pure monergism means mon-energism, which means the heresy of monothelitism, condemned by the 6th council.
This is a linguistic fallacy.
but the WCF mentions two wills nowhere and Calvinism’s acceptance of absolute simplicity means it must of necessity reject two energies in Christ as taught by the 6th council.
This is a word = concept fallacy.
The denial of the Real Presence coincides with late medieval nominalism a la Gabriel Biel.
Aside from Southern Presbyterianism, we don’t deny the real presence. We simply affirm that Jesus’s body is in heaven. We aren’t Eutychians.. In any case, his bringing up Biel is interesting. He has the same soteriology and Mariology as Biel.
That God has an “attribute” of hate, wherein He damns for all eternity in “fire,” thereby giving evil an eternal “existence.”
This is why people think Eastern Orthodox are universalists. We deny evil has has positive existence. Muller is clear on this (Latin and Greek Theological Dictionary). Shedd prefers to use the language of habits and accidents. Anselm said evil had an essence but not a substance. Do you see how complex the literature and concepts are?
Calvinism has the same anthropology as Pelagianism in terms of pre-lapsarian man
Pelagianism denies concreated holiness. We affirm it. This is standard stuff in Reformed dogmatics.
Calvinism thus confuses nature and grace in the garden as well as in soteriology, yet ironically rejects any real deification of the Logos’ flesh, and the former is based on the latter. The covenant of works, as said above, also necessitates a human person Jesus meritting a created legal state, which cannot save us. Our problem is mortaliy and corruption and thus we need to be made immortal, as 1 Cor. 15 clearly says Christ does to all.
These are called assertions.
Because human nature is inherently evil in Calvinism and because evil is given as substantial existence, created nature is thus alienated from and set in dialectical opposition to God and thus matter cannot image the Divine Persons or convey real divine energy/grace. We cannot be saved because Christ is not consubstantial with us. He is not consubstantial with us, because He does not assume our fallen nature, because fallen nature is thought to be inherently evil. In this system Christ does not assume universal human nature, but only some men – namely the elect. But resurrection isn’t a “natural” event – its supernatural and there is no other basis for all men to be resurrected than union with Christ.
Aside from more assertions, did any of this make sense to you?
There are good arguments for Eastern Orthodoxy. Perry has a lot of them, as well as an impressive reading list. You won’t find these from Jay.
A Patriot King 
I can’t recall the exact page citations, but Bathrellos’ book on Maximus shows that Maximus accepted, in a very particular sense, that Christ has two-hypostaseis. This was to refute the fall into error that John the Grammarian had pursued: namely that Christ had no concrete, individual, humanity (that Jesus was somehow humanity in the abstract, not an identifiable instance of man). Part of hypostasis’ definition was a concrete individual instance of a nature and Maximus had to affirm it, even while strongly adhering to Cyrillian theology. If you admit this fact, then the bizarre game of hunting up clips of phrases and words is a totally charade (i.e. “CaLvIniSMO affirms 2 person!?!/!11 NESTORIAN!!!!”), unless you want to say Maximus was a Nestorian.
It reminds me of the same insane accusations confessional Luthers make about the Reformed. I remember finding passage in Hooker’s opus (book VI I think) where he deals with this. He is dumbfounded with the Lutherans: of course everyone accepts the ubiquity of Christ, but what does this actually mean?
Don’t let reasonable questions ever get in the way of zealous obsession with particular grammar!
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Most of the major fathers spoke of a composite hypostasis. Jay actually got dealt with in PM by Jonathan Hill on Facebook on this point.
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Actually Jay Dyer has embraced the heresy of Severus of Antioch’s Monophysitism that he mistakenly takes for Orthodoxy and rejects that according to His humanity Christ is fully human, a fully human person because he understands that to mean Nestorianism. By saying that the Word performs what belongs to the Word, St.Leo understands the divine nature and energy of the Word because the Word is differentiated from the flesh which refers to the human nature and energy, so when he ,,the Word“, he refers to the eternal divine nature and energy as the Word’s own nature and energy. In his article ,,On nature, will, hypostasis and Protestant and Catholic heresy’’, Jay Dyer says:,, The Cyrillic interpretation, later confirmed Ecumenically, is grounded in the single subject being the eternal Logos, and with will being a property of Nature, not Person.’’. In his article ,,In what sense is Christ a ‘‘composite Hypostatis’’. Jonathan Hill refuted.“, he writes:,, There is no sense in which Christ is a human person – he absolutely is a Divine Person with a fully human nature. …Christ’s humanity has, for its hypostasis, its personal subject and locus of action, the Divine Person of the Word, and Him alone. …The Word alone is the only Person present for all His actions and there is no sense at all, whatsoever that Christ is a human person. …Finally, to argue on the basis of ‘the doctrine of “enhypostasia” that the Logos is the unique subject of willing and action is not objectionable, in so far as the Logos is considered to be the subject not only of the divine but also of human willing and acting in virtue of His having two wills and energies.“ (Bathrellos, 94).Thus, saying He is Theanthropos, God-man, does not in any sense make him a “human person” or introduce any human personal subject whatsoever. Indeed, the only Personal Subject present for all the incarnate actions of Christ is the Divine Person of the Word.“ In the same article mr. Dyer also says:,,the Divine Person of the Word is the only Hypostasis the humanity possesses“. He does not reject that according to His humanity Christ performed the acts proper to the human nature or that he had a human willing. Also, if by one subject we understand one Person/Hypostasis in Christ like mr.Dyer does, he is right and it is true that the Hypostasis/Person of the Word which was one before the Incarnation, remained one after the Incarnation with the difference that now two nature subsisted in it – divine and human. Also he is right when he says in ,,On nature, will, hypostasis and Protestant and Catholic heresy” that the mode of the will is hypostatic:,,the will is not and cannot be determined, as it is natural property, but its mode is always hypostatic.“ That is true because the Person/Hypostasis of Christ is one. But his mistake is that he says that the single subject after the Incarnation, is the eternal Logos, that Christ is a Divine Person, that the personal subject of Christ’s humanity is the Divine Person of the Word, that the Word alone is the only person present for all the actions of Christ, that the only personal subject present for the incarnate actions of Christ, is the Divine Person of the Word, and that the Divine Person of the Word is the only Hypostasis the humanity of Christ possesses. The mistake is that when he refers to the time after the incarnation, he says eternal Logos, Divine Person, Divine Person of the Word, Word alone. In the context of the Tome of St.Leo, the expressions ,,Word alone” and ,,eternal Logos” refer only to the divinity, to the divine nature and energy. Also when referring to the time after the Incarnation, he calls the Person/ Hypostasis of the Word ,,Divine”, he defines the Person/Hypostasis of the Word only with the divine nature and energy because the definition ,,Divine” can refer only to the divine nature and energy. That way, since the will is truly a property of the nature as Jay Dyer says, when he says that the Divine Person of the Word is the personal subject of all the incarnate actions of Christ, it turns out that the human actions belong to His divine nature and so proceed from His divine energy, wherefore since the willing follows the actions, His human willing would also belong to His divine nature and proceed from His divine energy. That would mean that his human nature does not have its own energy. Therefore, it would follow that after the Incarnation the divine nature and energy of Christ have changed as they would now have two wills and kinds of actions – divine and human, i.e. it would follow that God has changed which is impossible (James 1:17). Also, if the divine nature and energy have changed after the Incarnation, that would mean either that the divine nature and energy of Christ only have changed which would cause a split in the Trinity, or that since the divine nature and energy are common for the Three Persons, the divine nature and energy of all Three Persons have changed which would mean that the Three Persons have incarnated. A split of the Trinity is impossible because God is One Being in Three Persons and it is only the Word that became flesh (John 1:14). So, the human willing and actions of Christ do not belong to the divine nature and proceed from the divine energy but instead proceed from the energy of the human nature, i.e. the created human nature of Christ has its own energy. Therefore, although it is true that the subject of the human willing and actions is the One Person/Hypostasis of the Word, it is wrong to say that it is the Divine Person/Hypostasis of the Word Who is the subject of the human willing and actions because that would mean that His human nature does not have its own energy which, as it was shown, is not true. Also, the definition of the Hypostasis/Person of the Word through the divine nature only by the the expression ,,Divine Person/Hypostasis of the Word” when the expression refers to the time after the Incarnation, is wrong because because after the Incarnation there are now two natures subsisting in the One Hypostasis/Person of the Word and the Hypostasis cannot be defined through only one of them because that would be a confusion of Hypostasis and nature – in the case a confusion of the Hypostasis and the divine nature.
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I just now saw your comment. Thank you for your observations.
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Another argument against the acceptance that according to his human nature Christ is a fully human person (without the reference to His human nature as a human person implying Nestorianism), which is held by the Severians was that there is not a nature with no hypostasis (subsistence) and since His human nature came to subsist in the pre-existent Hypostasis of the Word after the Incarnation, thus not having its own hypostasis, it cannot be referred to as a human person because that would imply Nestorianism. That argument is held also by Jay Dyer. In ,,In what sense is Christ a ‘‘composite Hypostatis’’. Jonathan Hill refuted.“, he writes:,,There is no abstract human nature that exists in theory, but always in the mode of some Person.“ Here he refers to the mentioned argument of the Severians. But St.John of Damascus dedicates one of the chapters in his ,,Exact exposition of the Orthodox faith“ exactly to that question of the Severians and he refutes that wrong view. St.John of Damascus, Exact expositon of the Orthodox faith, Book 3, Chapter IX. In reply to the question whether there is Nature that has no Subsistence:,,For although there is no nature without subsistence, nor essence apart from person (since in truth it is in persons and subsistences that essence and nature are to be contemplated), yet it does not necessarily follow that the natures that are united to one another in subsistence should have each its own proper subsistence. For after they have come together into one subsistence, it is possible that neither should they be without subsistence, nor should each have its own peculiar subsistence, but that both should have one and the same subsistence. For since one and the same subsistence of the Word has become the subsistence of the natures, neither of them is permitted to be without subsistence, nor are they allowed to have subsistences that differ from each other, or to have sometimes the subsistence of this nature and sometimes of that, but always without division or separation they both have the same subsistence–a subsistence which is not broken up into parts or divided, so that one part should belong to this, and one to that, but which belongs wholly to this and wholly to that in its absolute entirety. For the flesh of God the Word did not subsist as an independent subsistence, nor did there arise another subsistence (hypostasis) besides that of God the Word, but as it existed in that it became rather a subsistence which subsisted in another, than one which was an independent subsistence (hypostasis). Wherefore, neither does it lack subsistence (hyspoastsis) altogether, nor yet is there thus introduced into the Trinity another subsistence (hypostasis).“ So the human nature of Christ subsists in the Hypostasis of the Word and that means neither that the human nature is without a hypostasis. It took the Hypostasis of the Word as its own hypostasis. Therefore the argument that the human nature of Christ cannot be referred to as a human person because it does not have its own hypostasis, is refuted. Therefore, since the human nature of Christ has its own energy and is not without a hypostasis, it can be referred to as a fully human person without that being Nestorianism. It must be added that St.Cyril explains his the famous phrase ,,Mia Physis Tou Theou Logou Sesarkomene“ in his second letter to Succensus:,,For if we had said that there was one nature of the Word and had kept silent and not added that it was ‘incarnate’, as if we were excluding the economy, they might perhaps have had a point when they pretended to ask where was the perfection in the humanity or how did our human essence endure. But since both the perfection in the humanity and the assertion of our human essence is implied by the word ‘incarnate’ then let them stop leaning on this broken staff (Is.36.6). For if anyone took away from the Son his perfect humanity he could rightly be accused of throwing the economy overboard, and of denying the incarnation.“ As he explains, the phrase refers to Christ’s human nature, so it is not used in a non-Chalcedonian sense. In accordance with the explaination of St.Cyril, the correct translation of the phrase is ,,One Incarnated Nature of the Word“ and not ,,one nature of the Word Incarnate“ as it is sometimes incorrectly translated.
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Jay is Nestorian when explaining Christ’s death and Cyrillian on the birth only to keep the goddess worship. That’s the trick EOs pull. Chalcedon did the same.
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Just to correct my last comment. At the places where I wanted to underline the fullness of Christ’s human nature, i used the phrase ,,fully human person”, although I had explicitly said that I did not use it in a Nestorian sense. Nevertheless, the phrase can be understood to be Nestorian, so where there is made a reference to the fullness of Christ’s humanity, it would be correct and best to use just the expression ,,fully human”.
Also it must be added that after i had a discussion with the Coptic bishop Peter Farrington who has a few articles on the matter, I figured out that the phrase ,,One Incarnate Nature of the Word” by St.Cyril is understood by the non-Chalcedonians to mean ,,One Incarnate Hypostasis” and not ,,one incarnate essence” because the latter could lead to the misconception of a mixture of essenses which would be wrong. In his phrase ,,one incarnate nature” St.Cyril uses the term ,,physis” which could mean both hypostasis and nature. In the phrase St.Cyril uses ,,physis” in the sense of ,,hypostasis”. So the non-Chalcedonians recognize the fullness of Christ’s humanity. But despite that they still do not recognize Chalcedon.
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Nestorius was right anyway. How can a Protestant say otherwise? To say otherwise is to be a Mary worshipping idolator. And all arguments in favor of Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism always fail for that reason: when they condemned Nestorius they apostasized and became Mother Goddess worshipping Pagans. So any legitimacy to their traditions ends at that council in Ephesus 431. (And then strangely Chalcedon in 451 puts forth basically a two-person Christology but they still refuse to roll back their Mary worshipping Paganism despite the two-person Christology logically refuting it. This shows they became inveterately pagan and hard-hearted in it.)
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Hello. Nestorianism contradicts Acts 20:28 which say:,,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, KJV). God does not have blood according to His divine nature but the meaning here is that the Person of the One Who suffered and died, is divine, i.e. has a divine nature. There is a difference between person and nature. Jesus is God by the divine nature and Son of God by personhood regarding the Father that he is eternally Begotten of by divinity. Jesus is not identical with the Father by personhood but by the common divine nature that They have.
The two-person Christology which means that there would be a human person/hypostasis in which Christ’s human nature subsists, also contradicts Scripture (Luke 1:43) because the Holy Virgin Mary can be called ,,mother of the Lord” only if Christ’s human nature subsists in the eternal Hypostasis of the Word in which it is united with the eternal divine nature, wherefore there is not a human hypostasis/person in which Christ’s humanity subsists.
For the same reason why she is called ,,mother of the Lord”, Jesus is referred to as eternal when He is referred to as man by St.John the Baptist:,,The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. 30 This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for He was before me.” (John 1:29-30, KJV).
As a man, Christ was born six months after St.John:,,And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also the holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. 36 And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. 37 For with God nothing is impossible. 38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. 39 And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda; 40 And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. 41 And it came to pass, that when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost; 42 And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. 43 And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lod should come to me?” (Luke 1:35-43, KJV).
So, when St.John the Baptist says that as a man Jesus was before him, he does not mean that according to His human nature He was born before St.John. Instead St.John is referring to Christ’s eternal Person in which the assumed human nature came to subsist, hence there are not two persons of Christ but one.
Therefore, Nestorius was wrong.
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You’re just playing games with language to justify your goddess worship.
Hebrews also says Melchisedek was made like the son of God in having neither father nor mother. Therefore that Christ is in a sense without mother is biblical orthodoxy. In his humanity he has no father, and in his divinity no mother. So Mary is Christotokos never Theotokos. This is why he belittles her calling her “Woman” to her face, for he speaks that as God and as God she is absolutely only a woman to him and not his mother.
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You’re just playing games with language to justify your goddess worship.
Hebrews also says Melchisedek was made like the son of God in having neither father nor mother. Therefore that Christ is in a sense without mother is biblical orthodoxy. In his humanity he has no father, and in his divinity no mother. So Mary is Christotokos never Theotokos. This is why he belittles her calling her “Woman” to her face, for he speaks that as God and as God she is absolutely only a woman to him and not his mother.
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