How about the hypostatic union.
Excellent point, Uther!
In response to several great heresies going on at different times, the Church has convened all the bishops to combat the evil of heresies.
Many Protestants take for granted the fact that the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union, and other doctrines were protected by the Catholic Church early on in its existence, and it was dogmatically (here, meaning
definitively) declared to be a Truth of the faith.
The nature of God as a man in Christ has been disputed for a very long time, and the
only reason Protestants have that truth in their individual churches is because the Holy Spirit led the Church to several very important councils over several hundred years.
At the Councils of Nicea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD), the Trinitarian doctrine took its intial form. Christ was declared “consubstantial”, meaning
of the same substance, with the being of God; and in the Council of Constantinople, the doctrine was further defined that the Holy Spirit was eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son.
Prior to 431 AD, various Christians (Nestorius, etc.) purported that Christ’s human person was of little consequence in the story of salvation, and that Christ was two persons (Jesus vs. the Son of God) rather than two natures (True God and True Man).
The First Council of Ephesus (the Third Ecumenical Council, 431 AD) was conveined specifically to counter these attacks against what the Church held to be
universally true, and they reaffirmed the doctrine that Christ was of two natures, and that Mary literally gave birth to “God as a man”, thus her title of
Theotokos came to be.
[On a side note, at the First Council of Ephesus, they combated *peligianism, which equated to “works righteousness” because it said that we did not need divine aid in order to become holy; it also denied Original Sin, and purported that Christ’s death was really unnecessary].
By 449 AD, people epically failed again with their teaching, and the Holy Spirit convened the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD (a.k.a the Fourth Ecumenical Council) in order to combat the teachings of Eutyches (it is believed that it may have been a misunderstanding by language barrier) that Christ had only possess the divine Logos and not a human soul. In fact, here the Hypostatic Union took shape; the Logos incarnate, Christ, was born with the divine nature of God and the human soul embodied in one person.
Thus, in the first four Ecumenical Councils, over a period of 125 years, did the doctrine of the Trinity finally take the shape of what we have today. Nobody today - no Christian, at least - argues with what the results of these Councils were.
Every belief that the councils defined existed
before the councils were even convened.
This is the beauty of Apostolic Tradition. It was handed to the Apostles by Christ Himself, yet because of our fallen nature, Christ would send the Holy Spirit out upon His Church to continue guiding us in to full understanding of that which He gave us.
Thus, we see with the Apostles not always understanding things as Christ intended:
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
St. Matthew 16:21-23
For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.
St. John 20:9
They were just as human as the rest of us; they could not understand things all the time, and Peter even feared for the death of his beloved Teacher. Yet Christ still tells them, and Peter specifically:
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “
Feed my lambs.” He then said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “
Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” (Jesus) said to him, “
Feed my sheep.”
St. John 21:15-17
Christ gave the Apostles a very special mission, even though they were sinners just like the rest of us. And as shown from other Scripture (which you have, by the way, happily ignored N2), St. Paul tells Timothy to appoint other worthy men to pass on the teachings.
