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Up-Ramp to heaven: Arianism
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| HERETICS ALWAYS hate themselves or fear
what they have become. But they never face the reality of that hatred
and fear. Instead, they blame everyone else. There was one kid at school who was a chronic liar. For show and tell, the rest of us told about our weekend, whom we played with, what interesting things we did. John told totally incredible tales. Every weekend had more excitement than a Mad Max movie; the crisis was always turned away at the last moment because John and his father between them carried more gear than James Bond and Inspector Gadget put together. If their rowing boat was sinking, a rescue helicopter was only a call away on the UHF radio; if they drove over a cliff in the dark, they just used the winch and cable they always carried to pull the car back to the road. It didn’t take long for us cynical 11 year olds to work out that John hated his father and his weekends were worse than boring. We also all noticed that you had to watch out if you got the weekly subject prize and John didn’t. You could be in for a thumping when you got outside the school gates. If he didn’t perform, it was someone else’s fault, and that someone else had to suffer. The day he faced the truth, the day he accepted that it wasn't always someone else's fault, he drove out into the bush somewhere near Greenfield Park and shot himself. Arius could not accept himself, and it showed in his theology. We have seen in the past few weeks how the Gospel is the message of Jesus, the one who bridges the gap between sinful humanity and the perfection of heaven. We read, There is one God, and
one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.
But we have also seen how often people have twisted the truth and
brought about their own destruction.And those who destroy their own faith drag others into the pit with them. Arius twisted the gospel, and his teachings still draw people into the pit of hell. I want you to get something clear though before we even start, and that is that the Arian heresy has nothing whatever to do with the Nazi belief in an Aryan master race. The Arian heresy is named after its inventor, Arius; Aryan is from a Sanskrit word which has been interpreted to mean, "A noble person". Back in the early 300s, there were many competing ideas. Was Mary the “Mother of God”? Or was she only the mother of the man, Jesus? After all, God is eternal. Was the Holy Spirit truly God? Sadly, the more questions people asked, the more they began to fight instead of trying to work out the answers. And Arius strode into the middle of all this. Maybe he wanted to be recognised as a a great thinker. Maybe he was trying to outdo his bishop and maybe take over from him. We don’t exactly know what motivated him, though it seems that some of these things were probably true. Arius began teaching that there was a time when the Son of God did not exist. He taught that Jesus was more than man, the first of the angels, but not truly God, not in a full sense. When people began to protest, Arius began a campaign. He pulled people into his camp. He said that a vote for Jesus as God was a vote for polytheism. He mocked those who said Jesus is both God and man. He wrote some of the first musical advertisements in history, little songs setting out his ideas. How sad that he didn't use his talent to teach truth! Does this sound familiar? Ever come across the Jehovah's Witnesses? Same doctrine. It's one of two very similar approaches which deny the deity, the Godliness, of Christ. Some say that God the Father adopted Jesus as his Son because of his obedience. The Christadelphians hold those ideas today. Others say that God created a spirit creature to inhabit the human being, Jesus. The Jehovahs Witnesses are in that camp. Can you see how this works out? Either way preaches a Christ who is not in full contact with God. Either way, there is no bridge between Heaven and humanity. And, either way, there is no real basis for salvation. Maybe you think, “It doesn’t bother me either way. I know I’m saved: it doesn’t matter to me how, exactly, that was done. Jesus came and died for me, and that’s enough.” If that’s how you come at the topic, it probably is enough for you. As a young Christian, I didn’t have a clue about how Jesus saved me. I understood that, when he died and rose again, it was God acting. A Christadelphian challenged me about the trinity, and I didn’t know what to say. I knew that Catholics believe in the trinity, but what about Protestants? Maybe Anglicans believed in the trinity, but that was about all I knew. But I was sure that Jesus had saved me from sin and death and hell. I was sure that his blood was enough to atone for my sin, to make God and myself “at one”. I need no other
argument,
In those early days, that was how thousands of believers thought and
felt.I need no other plea: It is enought that Jesus died, And that he died for me! But once Arius began to turn ignorance into doctrine, someone had to draw the line. I am not going to go into all the ins and outs of the Arian Controversy. The Emperor stepped in. At first the Arians won in Emperor Constantine’s eyes. The Catholics were banished if they didn’t convert. But the tide turned. Arius got banished a couple of times. Then Athanasius came up on the Orthodox and Catholic side, and seemed to be winning the debate until he was also repeatedly banished. But finally orthodox teachings prevailed and Arianism was declared a heresy. Sadly, by then nearly all the Gothic people had been converted to the Arian side, and Arianism never fully died out on the frontiers of the Empire. At its heart, the Arian idea came from a feeling that there could never be any true contact between God and sinful humanity. In fact, it was more than that. We Christians believe that humanity is sinful. We believe that every aspect of our lives is, in some way, damaged by our sinfulness. The Arians went much further. To them, humanity was not merely sinful, it was corrupt. We believe that the good has been damaged. In their hearts, the Arians could not believe that there ever had been anything good in humanity. So how could a pure God be in contact with an impure humanity? They didn’t see that, in Jesus, God was united with humanity as it was originally created to be. If we go back to John 1, we see a very clear exposition of the incarnation, the coming into human existence, of the eternal Word of God. John starts deliberately with an echo of Genesis 1:1: In the beginning... For Genesis, In the beginning God
created...
For John,In the beginning was
the Word.
Here, at the point where God hadn't yet said, “Let there be light!” the
Word of God already was.But what is this “Word”? For us today, the easiest way to understand it is to think of how closely a word is connected with a thought. You could say, “Jesus is the Word expressing the thoughts of God the Father. Whatever thought God the Father has, we hear it said when we see Jesus.” At the time when John wrote, there were two ideas that people also responded to when he chose to speak of the Word. The Jews thought back to Proverbs 8, where Wisdom speaks: “The LORD brought me
forth as the first of his works,
The Jews always thought there was a connexion between the creative
Wisdom of God in Proverbs and the creative Word in Genesis, where God
merely spoke and called the entire creation into being.before his deeds of old; 8:23 I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. 24 When there were no oceans, I was given birth, when there were no springs abounding with water; 25 before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was given birth, 8:26 before he made the earth or its fields or any of the dust of the world. Over and over, we read, “va’omer elohim... va'yhi...” — and God said... and there was...” At the same time, the Greeks were developing a concept of the creation. They believed that there was a logic, a Logos, behind all of creation. The popular idea was that everything in all creation came from the spermatikos Logos, the seed-logic, sown at the beginning. From this seed all that exists came into being. So the Greek word that John used was logos. In the beginning was the logos. Greeks would have thought of the creative principle behind the universe, Jews would have thought of the creative Wisdom with God at the beginning, and we think of the Word which expresses the mind of God. What do we read? This Word was ...with God and was
God. He was with God in the beginning.
When we read the Word was with God, the word for “with” is pros. Greek has several words for
“with”.There’s meta, just meaning “with” in the most general sense. For example, the word, midwife is related to that word. A midwife is someone with a woman, particularly a woman having a baby. Then there’s para, meaning alongside. It can be a partner, or a subordinate. We talk of paralegals who work in a subordinate way alongside a legal professional. We talk of parallel lines, which run alongside each other, but never meet. Finally, there’s pros. It has a sense of “in front of” or “face to face with”. In medicine, words starting with pros- often refer to a gland or an organ standing in front of another gland or organ. The idea is intimate connexion. The Word is not just generally there with God, nor is the Word alongside God, but never meeting him. The Word is on eye-contact basis with the creator of the universe and an active participant in the entire business of creation. Furthermore, that Word is also light for all human beings. In him was life, and
that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and
the darkness has not understood or overcome it.
Yet, as soon as John establishes this idea, he moves us a
parallel truth, that this true light was coming into the world, yet he
came to his own and was not recognised or received. He tells us,The Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us.
As Paul also writes, PHP 2:5 Your attitude should be the
same as that of Christ Jesus:
2:6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 2:7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 2:8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! 2:9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 2:10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 2:11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The Bible clearly teaches that the one who came from the realms of glory became a true human being. It teaches that the one who shared the very nature of God took the form of a slave. It teaches that the personal expression of God the Father let himself die on a cross for your sins and mine. When we sing at Christmas, True God of true God,
we
are expressing the truth Arius could never grasp, that, in the person
of Jesus, God and humanity were forever united. We are admitting that
our humanity is fallen, but God created it good. It is not
intrinsically evil, but it is totally depraved — a very different thing.Light of light eternal — Lo, he abhors not the virgin's womb... Arians have always had to develop a strong doctrine of works. The Jehovahs Witnesses go door to door, not because their experience of Jesus impells them, but because their fear of not being saved drives them to keep working. In other words, they do what their religion demands because they have no certainty of being saved; and they have no certainty of being saved, because they have no secure faith in Christ, and they have no secure faith in Christ, because they do not believe him worthy of their faith. It’s that simple and it’s that nonsensical. If you know the Lord
You need nobody else To see you through The darkest night. You can walk alone You only need him there He'll keep you on The path marked “Right”... I think it was John Kenneth Galbraith who said, "For every complex question there is always an answer which is simple, easily understood, and wrong.” It certainly applies to Arius’ proposed solution to the problem of who Jesus really is. Because Jesus shaes God’s own nature, his death on my behalf is effective. The price is paid, and I can enter into all that Jesus died to make my own. If you are ready to turn from sin, and trust Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, see me when the service is over. On your sheet today is a copy of the Nicene Creed, which was originally written to set out the orthodox position against Arian ideas. Let’s read it together as we close... |
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| © Peter R. Green 2003. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. | |
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