Continuing the Subject of the Arian Heresy

TOPIC: CHRISTOLOGY
By Len Mier

The Nicaean Creed states our belief the Jesus Christ is eternally begotten of the Father before all ages and not created. It also describes Him in the philosophical terms and poetic imagery that the one Lord Jesus Christ is Light of Light, very God of very God. And being of one essence with the Father. This places Jesus as equal to the Father as God.

This issue did linger on for several more centuries due to intervention of the emperors imposing their beliefs as well as their courtiers’ beliefs on the Church regarding this issue. Eventually a strict Arian belief did disappear in the Church.

There are several Semi-Arian belief systems that are still present. The Jehovah Witnesses are said to be Semi-Arian in that they believe Jesus is not truly God but is His only-begotten produced by Him Alone and the first born in creation by which other things were made. The Jehovah Witnesses give the same divine prerogative to Jesus and do not pray to Jesus but see him as the prime mediator to God.

It can also be said that Islam has some Arianism in its teaching. Jesus is in Islam a prophet of God but does not believe that there is any divinity present in Jesus. The Koran explicitly states in verse 112, “God neither begets nor is He begotten”. This leaves the nature of Jesus to a purely human state.
It is one of the triumphs of orthodoxy that through the use of Scripture, Tradition and philosophical language the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council created a framework of understanding and a creedal statement of belief was formed. The framework stating that Arius’ beliefs were not the true beliefs the Church pro-fesses as in who and what Jesus is in relation to God the Father and that Jesus is equal to the Father.

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If you have followed Len’s presentation, you will see that the seminary is truly challenging him to think about what it is that we actually believe. I would exhort those who are following the essays that he has to submit, to think about the topic he is writing about. Who do YOU say Jesus it?
I believe the only thing that we can truly say is that we believe that Jesus is equally God as are the Father and the Holy Spirit. How this is possible, since Jesus is also equally human, is a mystery and truly beyond human comprehension. It is, however, something that we say we believe. Our faith tells us that Jesus was and is FULLY GOD and FULLY MAN and that His existence as God did not dictate how His existence as a human being thought or acted. His thinking and acting as a human being was completely and totally free since He had a FREE WILL as all humans do. If this wasn’t true, He could never be a MODEL to us humans as to how we should think and act if we want to gain the fullness of life.
When God created us, He provided us with a way to freely grow in our “likeness” of Jesus and to fulfill the purpose of human life, namely to become spiritual, adopted children of God.
WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?