Posted by Ray Kidder on 9/27/2009, 3:03 pm, in reply to "Re: Interpreting Matthew 11 & John 14"
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Searcher,
Thanks for your response, in which you mentioned some verses that seem like some of those that were used by those who condemned Arianism at the first ecumenical council.
This is from Colossians 1 (NKJV):
13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,
14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
19 For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell,
20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
In verse 15, it says that Jesus is the firstborn over all creation. Doesn’t this statement support the Arian view that Jesus was created by God, or does it instead mean that Jesus proceeded from God from before creation (as an eternal procession), and was not made?
To answer this question, these excerpts from a book called The Orthodox Church, by Timothy Ware, copyright 1997, explain some of the purposes and outcomes of the first ecumenical council, in which the Church claimed to discover the answer to this question:
In the chapter called The Church of the Seven Councils, page 20, it says:
“The life of the Church in the earlier Byzantine period is dominated by the seven general councils. These councils fulfilled a double task. First, they clarified and articulated the visible organization of the Church, crystallizing the position of the five great sees or Patriarchates, as they came to be known. Secondly, and more important, the councils defined once and for all the Church’s teaching upon the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith – the Trinity and the Incarnation. All Christians agree in regarding these things as ‘mysteries’ which lie beyond human understanding and language. The bishops, when they drew up definitions at the councils, did not imagine that they had explained the mystery; they merely sought to exclude certain false ways of speaking and thinking about it. To prevent people from deviating into error and heresy, they drew a fence around the mystery; that was all.
The discussions at the councils at times sound abstract and remote, yet they were inspired by a very practical purpose: human salvation. Humanity, so the New Testament teaches, is separated from God by sin, and cannot through its own efforts break down the wall of separation which its sinfulness has created. God has therefore taken the initiative: He has become man, has been crucified, and has risen again from the dead, thereby delivering humanity from the bondage of sin and death. This is the central message of the Christian faith, and it is this message of redemption that the councils were concerned to safeguard. Heresies were dangerous and required condemnation, because they impaired the teaching of the New Testament, setting up a barrier between humans and God, and so making it impossible for humans to retain full salvation.”
On page 22, the author continues:
“The main work of the Council of Nicea in 325 was the condemnation of Arianism. Arius, a priest in Alexandria, maintained that the Son was inferior to the Father, and, in drawing a dividing line between God and creation, he placed the Son among created things: a superior creature, it is true, but a creature none the less. His motive, no doubt, was to protect the uniqueness and the transcendence of God, but the effect of his teaching, in making Christ less than God, was to render impossible our human deification. Only if Christ is truly God, the council answered, can He unite us to God, for none but God Himself can open to humans the way of union. Christ is ‘one in essence’ (homoousios) with the Father. He is no demigod or superior creature, but God in the same sense that the Father is God: ‘true God from true God,’ the council proclaimed in the Creed which it drew up, ‘begotten not made, one in essence with the Father’.”
Do you think the outcome of this ecumenical council was useless, or was this something that God used to promote human salvation, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit?
Ray Kidder
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