{"id":5053,"date":"2017-03-05T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T15:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=5053"},"modified":"2017-03-02T10:44:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-02T15:44:51","slug":"learning-our-faith-from-the-greek-fathers-of-the-church-20160305","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=5053","title":{"rendered":"Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20160305"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As I shared in the last issue of this article, the Arian heresy began when Arius refused to accept Alexander\u2019s formulations about Jesus. If the Son, Arius exclaimed, possesses the same divine nature as the Father – is \u201cconsubstantial\u201d with him – then \u201cthe Father is compound and divisible and alterable and a body, and according to them presumably, the bodiless God is though of as suffering what belongs to a body.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Father, Arius insisted, cannot share his divine nature with another. He is by definition simple (not made up of parts<\/em>) and indivisible (incapable of division into parts<\/em>). Hence, whoever and whatever the Son is, he cannot be The eternally God, uncreated and consubstantial with the Father. Some other definition regarding the Son will have to be formulated, and Arius appoints himself for the task.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is it that we say, and think, and have taught, and teach?\u201d Arius asks Eusebius.<\/p>\n

That the Son is not unbegotten, nor a part of the unbegotten in any way, nor formed out of any substratum, but that he was constituted by \u201cGod\u2019s will and counsel, before times and before ages, full of grace and truth, divine, unique, unchangeable. And before he was begotten or created or ordained or founded, he was not. <\/em>For he was not unbegotten. We are persecuted because we say, \u201cThe Son has a beginning, but God is without beginning.\u201d For this we are persecuted, and because we say, \u201che is made out of things that were not.\u201d But this is what we say, since he is neither a part of God nor formed out of any substratum. For this we are persecuted, and you know the rest.<\/p>\n

Frankly, Arius seems to want his cake and to eat it, too. On the one hand, he wants to affirm that the Son is in some way divine. On the other hand, if Arius is to preserve God\u2019s simplicity and indivisibility, he must affirm that the Son has a beginning, even if he posits this as a beginning outside of time as we know it. Arius asserts, then, that the Son was \u201cbegotten timelessly by the Father and created before ages and established.\u201d Arius admits that the Son is utterly unique – \u201cHe alone was constituted by the Father – yet the Son is \u201cneither eternal nor coeternal nor co-unbegotten with the Father, nor does he have his being together with the Father.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I shared in the last issue of this article, the Arian heresy began when Arius refused to accept Alexander\u2019s formulations about Jesus. If the Son, Arius exclaimed, possesses the same divine nature as the Father – is \u201cconsubstantial\u201d with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-our-faith-form-the-church-fathers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5054,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053\/revisions\/5054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}