Arius: more of a heretic than I thought he was...

Last year in church history we heard about a number of heretics in the early church.

Our lecturer was really great at helping to be sympathetic to them.  That is, to listen carefully to what they say, weigh it carefully, not react to hastily to them, and to see the good things in what they were trying to do.

Arius was a a guy who said that 'there was a time when the Son was not'.  Well today I've been reading a bit of Arius' work for myself.  This is an excerpt in Athanasius' work where he quotes Arius at length.

Moreover he has dared to say, that ‘the Word is not the very God;’ ‘though He is called God, yet He is not very God,’ but ‘by participation of grace, He, as others, is God only in name.’ And, whereas all beings are foreign and different from God in essence, so too is ‘the Word alien and unlike in all things to the Father’s essence and propriety,’ but belongs to things originated and created, and is one of these. Afterwards, as though he had succeeded to the devil’s recklessness, he has stated in his Thalia, that ‘even to the Son the Father is invisible,’ and ‘the Word cannot perfectly and exactly either see or know His own Father;’ but even what He knows and what He sees, He knows and sees ‘in proportion to His own measure,’ as we also know according to our own power. For the Son, too, he says, not only knows not the Father exactly, for He fails in comprehension, but ‘He knows not even His own essence;’—and that ‘the essences of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, are separate in nature, and estranged, and disconnected, and alien, and without participation of each other;’ and, in his own words, ‘utterly unlike from each other in essence and glory, unto infinity.’ 

Cited by Athanisius in Discourses Against the Arians (1.2.6)

I'm struggling to be positive...

Thankfully we can have confidence that Jesus - the Word - is truly God and as such, truly reveals the Father to us.

John 1:1-2

 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.

John 1:18

18 No one has ever seen God; the only One, who is God,  who is at the Father's side,  he has made him known.

John 14:9

The one who has seen Me has seen the Father.

Who is Jesus Christ for us today?

'Who is Jesus Christ for us today?'

This is a question posed by Bonhoffer in the 1940s.  Today our lecturer posed it to us.

Here's my quick 2 minute answer:

Today Jesus is seen as a byword, a swear word, a nice guy, but an irrelevant guy.  His followers are seen as bigoted, weak and stupid.  However, the reality is that Christ is who he always has been.  He is the ruler of the world.  He is the one who is reconciling all things to the Father.  To those who believe in him, he is their brother, their Saviour and their Lord.

What do you think,  'who is Jesus Christ for us today?'

awesome homework #2: what does Colossians 1:15-20 say about creation and its destiny?

Another awesome homework task: What does Colossians 1:15-20 say about creation and its destiny?

What struck me immediately was the "Jesus-ness" of creation described here.  Admittedly, this passage is about Jesus, first and foremost, and just happens to say things about creation as well.  But I think that sometimes I forget that the Son was involved in creation, not just the Father.  The Son is over all creation (v15).  He is superior to all of the created things (v17).  Everything was created by Him (v16).  Everything was created though Him (v16).  Everything was created for Him (v16).  He created more than we think.  He created not just the stuff we can see, but also the stuff we can't.  He didn't just create it and let it go wild with its own whims, but He holds everything together (v17).

Not only is Jesus the head of the original creation, he is also head of the new creation.  The church is a new creation, a gathering of those reconciled to Himself (v18, 20 cf 2 Cor 5:17).  It is a new body, and He is its head (v18).  Verse 18 also hints at the end of things, of the destiny of creation: "He is also the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead, so that He might come to have first place in everything."  Creation changed with the resurrection of Jesus.  The world is no longer the same.  A person has now been raised from the dead.  And He won't be the last.  He is the firstborn from the dead.  It was just the beginning.  More will follow.  This guarantees that all of creation will be made new.  [Well, this is the more the point of 1 Corinthians 15...also a good read :-)].  But here Paul says that because Jesus has been raised from the dead He will be the boss.  He will have first place in everything.  Also, everything will be reconciled to the Father through Jesus' death (v20).  The end will be reconciliation and peace.  It will be a complete reconciliation, including both things in heaven and on earth (v20).  But there will still be a pecking order.  The Son will be in first place over all creation.

But with all this Jesus-ness, what about the Father?  Was He on holidays?  Is He in disagreement with these plans?  Absolutely not!  The Son is like the Father.  He is His image, His likeness (v15).  Furthermore, God the Father was pleased to have all of his fullness dwell in the Son (v19).  And He was pleased to reconcile everything to Himself through the Son (v20).  This was His plan, His design.

the intertwined nature of creation and redemption

Yesterday we had a doctrine class where we started talking about the doctrine of creation.

One thing that really got me thinking was the statement that 'we should not separate our doctrine of creation from our doctrine of salvation'.

This was new to me in some ways, but not in other ways.

Clearly Jesus is central to God's purposes.  It is where all things are headed.  "[God the Father] made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure that He planned in [the Messiah] for the administration of the days of fulfillment  — to bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him" (Eph 1:9-10).  All things will come under Jesus.

But Jesus is not just involved at the end of time.  He was also involved in the beginning.  He was not plan B because we screwed up.  "[The Father] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world" (Eph 1:4).  God always planned to save us.  He planned it even before any of us had done anything we needed to be saved from.  The fact that we would to be saved - and how it would happen - was inbuilt into the way God created the world.

So salvation impacted creation.

But creation also impacts salvation.  As the Son sought to saved humans, he needed to become human.  "Now since the children have flesh and blood in common, Jesus also shared in these, so that through His death He might destroy the one holding the power of death — that is, the Devil — and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death. For it is clear that He does not reach out to help angels, but to help Abraham’s offspring. 17 Therefore, He had to be like His brothers in every way, so that He could become a merciful and faithful high priest in service  to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people" (Heb 2:14-17).

So creation impacts salvation.

Furthermore, creation impacts salvation in another, more abstract, way as well.  The Bible often describes salvation using creation language.  Salvation is cast as a new creation.  "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come" (2 Cor 5:17).  "You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator" (Col 3:10b).  One of things we looked at in class was how the language of salvation and creation is intertwined Isaiah 40-55.  This was my favourite part of the class.  We saw how salvation is described using the language of creation.  Darkness to light, barrenness to fruitfulness, order to chaos.  Furthermore, God's ability to create gives him the ability to save, and gives assurance to his people that He will save.

What a delight!  The intermingled plans of creation and salvation.  This God is powerful and trustworthy.