CHRISTIANITY & COUNTERFEITS

The importance of understanding where Christianity has come from is nearly impossible to overstate, given the priceless perspective it gives us concerning the essential content of what it actually means to be Christian.

Too often, today’s culture looks down its nose on history; especially the history of the church as a burden and nasty stain on our past, rather than a clear and focused lens through which we might ascertain timeless truths amidst the constant inane babble of culture. A culture who by its nature would woo those who name the name of Christ, to ‘kow-tow’ to its agenda, rather than remain clear about what Christianity believes - in spite of the culture, not because of it.

I will survey briefly some of the initial challenges the early church faced in her infancy, with the hope that we will begin to recognize these errors, as they endlessly ‘reface’ themselves for fresh consumption on the current stage of church history in which we now find ourselves.

Modalism, or Modalistic Monarchianism as it is also known, was a heretical teaching that the early church found itself needing to refute. Namely, the erroneous teaching that there is only one god, who exists as only one person. Thus, Modalists deny the Father, Son, and Spirit’s co-eternal unity as one God and simultaneous distinction as co-existent persons. Some have described this lack of distinction as the “god as glob” view. Essentially, they were teaching that god shows up in different ‘modes’ - sometimes as the ‘father,’ sometimes as the ‘son,’ and sometimes as the ‘holy spirit’ - but that in reality ‘they’ are merely one person choosing to manifest in trifold ‘modes’ depending on the occasion and purpose. Obviously, this greatly affected their understanding of Christ’s deity, insomuch that by following their teaching to its logical end, they asserted that the ‘father’ had actually been incarnated, but that when he did so he was functioning as ‘Jesus Christ’ the ‘son.’ Following this line of thought, they would apply this understanding to the current ministry of the ‘holy spirit’ as not truly a distinct person, but rather that god is merely functioning in a different ‘mode’ to achieve his current purposes.

Tertullian became a key responder to this error, and wrote against the heretic Praxeas who was promoting the view widely. Against this view the church affirmed that there existed co-eternally three distinct persons - The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - as the one and only true God, not acting under the guise of different names at different times but retaining eternally their unique personhood eternally in perfect unity, yet without confusion of their persons.

In the 4th century, the Church found itself dealing with a north African pastor from Alexandria, Egypt, named Arius. Preaching a sermon from Proverbs chapter eight, verse twenty-two - which personifies wisdom as being present with God while He created the world - Arius sought to persuade his congregation and others that this wisdom was in fact Jesus, by connecting this passage to the NT in first Corinthians chapter one, verse twenty-four, saying Jesus was the ‘wisdom of God’ and therefore the first thing ‘god’ created. So Arius began to teach from then on that the ‘son of god’ was a creature and not eternal, that he was the first creature god made, that god became a father after he created the son, and that the term ‘son of god,’ meant he was begotten the way temporal beings are; and thus ‘christ’ was ‘made’ or ‘created.’ His key phrase was, “There was a time when he [‘christ’] was not.” Arius’ teaching gained popularity because he was seen as a “defender of the church against the charge of polytheism.” By getting rid of Jesus’ eternality, Arius believed that he was preserving God’s monotheistic identity.

Because of the Arian controversy, Emperor Constantine ordered the meeting of an ecumenical council at Nicaea in 325 A.D. Comprised of church leaders, bishops, and presbyters, they were to come to a consensus on whether Jesus was “Creator-God,” or if he was “made.” Constantine was chiefly motivated by wanting to preserve the unity of his kingdom, because this issue had created quite a schism amongst the people. At this council the views of Arius were condemned and found to be entirely heretical. The council of Nicaea affirmed Christ’s full deity and co-equality in essence with the Father, as “Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made.” While retaining the uniqueness of his personhood, and emphasizing the Christological doctrine of creation through Christ, the Christological doctrine of Salvation tied to his full deity, bodily suffering, and subsequent Resurrection assuring he will come again as the supreme judge of the living and the dead.

The Cappadocians were the champions of Trinitarian theology, and answered the call better than any others when it came to presenting the case from the Scripture that God was indeed One and yet existing as such in the unbroken unity of three distinct persons. Basil of Caesarea lauded Nicaea’s assertion that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were of the same ‘ousia,’ or essence/substance. That God was three distinct and unconfused persons – namely, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit - and that the persons of the Godhead possessed equality in their omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, omnibenevolence, and eternality. Basil along with the other Cappadocian apologists, defended the common faith in the one God as the “Godhead,” but also that faith in the particular persons of the “Godhead” must be articulated as well. As such they held that all things were ‘to’ and ‘from’ the Father, all things were ‘through’ the Son, (eternally/timelessly begotten) and ‘by’ the Spirit. They taught that the Father was the ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ of all things, that Christ was the divine ‘agent’ of the Father, and that the Spirit was the ‘means.’ Thus, they taught that we have a reconciled relationship of access to the Father through the atoning incarnational sacrifice of the Son of God, by means of the Holy Spirit. They viewed rightly that every act of God is a Trinitarian act.

Concerning the Holy Spirit, they held that “the Spirit of Christ” was the Holy Spirit, and not to be confused with Christ himself. So in the end then, they defended aptly that there is indeed only one true God, and that He exists in three distinct, unconfused persons in perfect unity, and equality of eternal deity.

In 381 A.D., at Constantinople after the heretic Arius had died, the church came together to draft another creed affirming Christ’s deity and eternality, reaffirming the Nicene Creed, which had preceded it in 325 A.D., but with some additions and clarifications. The main addition was that it explicitly affirmed the deity of the Holy Spirit by saying of Him, “who with the Father and the Son together worshiped and together glorified.” But against Arius, a further clarification was made concerning Christ as being “begotten from the Father before all time, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created.” Against Apollinarianism the Creed asserted concerning Christ, “Who for us men and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became human.” The end of the Creed explicitly emphasizes the Holy Spirit’s deity when it says, “And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, who proceeds from the Father.”

So it becomes quite clear then that affirming by faith that God is who He says He is shows itself to be indispensible to salvation, for we cannot be saved by the ‘god’ of our own invention, or one who acquiesces to our full understanding. We can only be saved by the God who IS. We need not fully understand exactly how He is who He says He is, but one thing is absolutely certain: We must absolutely affirm it. The Scripture does not pretend to explain how God is who He says He is; but one thing it does present, and that is: We must believe He is who He says He is. For as Christ clearly stated to the Pharisees,

“Unless you believe that I AM who I say I AM, you will die in your sins.” (John 8:24).

Therefore let us pay close attention to the work of those faithful saints who have gone before us, preserving at great cost to themselves the true essence of what it means to be Christian. No culture wields the right to define who God is, who Christ is, or what it means to be Christian. No, this belongs to the prophets, Apostles, and rich heritage of those of the Church who have faithfully passed the torch of truth on to us here and now. May we take it into this generation unashamed at its mystery, and be unwavering in its clear articulation as delivered to us through the Scriptures and the Creeds. Let us pay close attention to heed Paul’s command to Titus,

“But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.” (Titus 2:1)