Adoptionism

She, she denies the virgin birth.

That is the ancient heresy of Ebionitism and maybe kind of Adoptionism.

Adoptionism, you know, which is a- another ancient heresy, but it crops up in modernity, this idea that Jesus isn't...

He's not born God.

He just sort of becomes...

And every heresy denies one or both of those subsistent relations.

Arianism and Adoptionism deny the first order.

Docetism, Apollinarianism, and Eutychianism the second order.

Nestorianism denies the unity of the person.

In fact, by making this trade, the churches are actually surrendering the message that can truly heal problems that merely therapeutic imperatives cannot.

The logic that connects Pelagianism, justification by works, and exemplary atonement, adoptionist Christology, and Unitarianism, has been known by scholars observing the tradition of Erasmus in the last four centuries.

But the pastoral cruelty of scolding people in bondage who are not properly using their freedom, a freedom they do not possess, we believe, until graced by the word, has been largely ignored.

An Episcopalian wrote that? That's amazing.

Now, every Christological error that we will encounter will violate one or both of those relations.

Arianism and Adoptionism will deny the Son's eternal divine subsistence.

Docetism and Apollinarianism will deny the integrity and wholeness of the assumed humanity.

Nestorianism will deny the single assuming subject, the personal center in the incarnation.

So this taking of a nature into union with himself is that second relation.

Now, here's what I want you to appreciate.

This clause excludes all views in which the personhood of Jesus arises from the combination of a divine and human nature Eutychianism, or from a human elevated by grace, Adoptionism, or from a divine person who abandons divine attributes to become human, uh, Kenoticism.

With that in place, this portion of the confession goes on, "He assumed a true human nature with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin." Now, this phrase secures the integrity, the completeness, and the reality of the human nature, all the essential properties.