For what can you fittingly either say or think concerning Him who is greater than all discourses and thoughts? What, then, shall we say? Moreover, other heretics have so far embraced the manifest divinity of Christ, as to say that He was without flesh, and to withdraw from Him the whole humanity which He took upon Him, lest, by associating with Him a human nativity, as they conceived it, they should diminish in Him the power of the divine name. Jesus, in turn, then created the Holy Spirit. For no man can be before Him from whom he himself is; nor can it be that any one should have been prior to him of whom he himself has taken his origin. For He is the image of the invisible God, as the imperfection and frailty of the human condition was accustomed sometimes even then to see God the Father in the image of God, that is, in the Son of God. In the New Testament, the term is used for the parties of the This is He who places prophets in the Church, instructs teachers, directs tongues, gives powers and healings, does wonderful works, often discrimination of spirits, affords powers of government, suggests counsels, and orders and arranges whatever other gifts there are of charismata; and thus make the Lords Church everywhere, and in all, perfected and completed. If, before the world was, He had glory with God, and maintained His glory with the Father, He existed before the world, for He would not have had the glory unless He Himself had existed before, so as to be able to keep the glory. If Christ was only man, how does He say, And now glorify me with the glory which I had with You before the world was? Updates? Truly, it is a Mystery. What portion of the analogy holds true with Church Teaching? Wisdom Literature From time to time, Doctors of the Church used analogies, but with care. This God, then, setting aside the fables and figments of heretics, the Church knows and worships, to whom the universal and entire nature of things as well visible as invisible gives witness; whom angels adore, stars wonder at, seas bless, lands revere, and all things under the earth look up to; whom the whole mind of man is conscious of, even if it does not express itself; at whose command all things are set in motion, springs gush forth, rivers flow, waves arise, all creatures bring forth their young, winds arc compelled to blow, showers descend, seas arc stirred up, all things everywhere diffuse their fruitfulness. The alternatives which we are to encounter face-to-face the other. If Christ is only man, how is it that He says, Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: because I know whence I came, and whither I go; you know not whence I came, and whither I go. For since with God the order of all, both persons and things, is arranged, many will be said to have been predestinated before this predestination of Christ to glory. And why should I make a long business of going through His attributes one by one? Chalcedon The Gospels the biblical data was examined, its elements of truth sifted out and For it cannot happen that He should be the originator or architect of any evil work, who claims to Himself the name of the Perfect, both Parent and Judge, especially when He is the avenger and judge of every evil work; because, moreover, evil does not occur to man from any other cause than by his departure from the good God. He, then, is always like to Himself; nor does He ever turn or change Himself into any forms, lest by change He should appear to be mortal. For we know that man was made after the image or likeness, not after the form, of God. Arianismtaught that the preexistent Christ was the first and greatest of Gods creatures but denied his fully divine status. But things which are not concrete cannot be conscious of these things. For no one could possess anything, unless he himself should first be in existence to keep anything. The New Testament the other, into an intelligently consistent conception of his Lord. And in the same way as He was as man after many, so as God He was before all. Therefore, in this respect, one of two things must needs be established. range of evangelical traditions, all of the ideas and principles conveyed But if He has received from Christ what He may declare to us, Christ is greater than the Paraclete, because the Paraclete would not receive from Christ unless He were less than Christ. The Council condemned EUTYCHIANISM, and gave the church the creedal (AD 451) -- three bishops and two presbyters presided. For if this glory was in predestination, Christ received that predestination to glory last of all; for prior to Him Adam will be seen to have been predestinated, and Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and many others. Therefore as man He was not there before, but ascended there where He was not. Because if He had not wished to be understood to be God, He would have added, And the man Jesus Christ, whom You have sent; but, in fact, He neither added this, nor did Christ deliver Himself to us as than only, but associated Himself with God, as He wished to be understood by this conjunction to be God also, as He is. Historically, the major means that the church had of combating heretics was to excommunicate them. Gregory the Theologian explicitly relates both creation and incarnation. Chapter 28 For Catholic Christians who want to know more about God it is not sufficient to stop the investigation once the existence and nature of the divinity have been established. And thus by the word of the angel the distinction is made, against the desire of the heretics, between the Son of God and man; yet with their association, by pressing them to understand that Christ the Son of man is man, and also to receive the Son of God and man the Son of God; that is, the Word of God as it is written as God; and thus to acknowledge that Christ Jesus the Lord, connected on both sides, so to speak, is on both sides woven in and grown together, and associated in the same agreement of both substances, by the binding to one another of a mutual alliance man and God by the truth of the Scripture which declares this very thing. But now Christ has the glory before the foundation of the world; therefore He Himself was before the foundation of the world. Heresies and errors about the Trinity can be classified in the following way: 1) theunityof the divine nature is denied so that you have some form oftritheism, that is, three gods joined together is some kind of moral unity. violent controversies. For that God is angry, arises from no vice in Him. For because, undoubtedly, they are said to be gods unto whom the words of God were given, much more is He God who is found to be superior to all these. to the complete neglect of the Holy Spirit. As much they as the Jews, holding that the carnal birth of Christ was the only one, believed that Christ was nothing else than man; not considering this point, that as man could not come from heaven, so as that he might return there, He who descended thence must be God, seeing that man could not come thence. And after these things He also placed man at the head of the world, arid man, too, made in the image of God, to whom He imparted mind, and reason, and foresight, that he might imitate God; and although the first elements of his body were earthly, yet the substance was inspired by a heavenly and divine breathing. FOR CENTURIES, the Church had fought against heresies on the Trinity. Nor, because they maintain one thing in Christ and, do not maintain another, they see one side of Christ and do not see another, shall there be taken away from us that which they do not see for the sake of that which they do. What have you to do with the Creators man? For because He is incorruptible, He is therefore immortal; and because He is immortal, He is certainly also incorruptible each being involved by turns in the other, with itself and in itself, by a mutual connection, and prolonged by a vicarious concatenation to the condition of eternity; immortality arising from incorruption, as well as incorruption coming from immortality. Answer The most difficult thing about the Christian concept of the Trinity is that there is no way to perfectly and completely understand it. He has also established the oak trees of the woods for the future benefit of human uses. Covenant, Election and Realized Eschatology, The Pride of Pride: God's Assessment of Today's Cultural Idol, The End of Exodus: Why deliverance from Egypt is not the climax of the book, Appeal for Religious Liberty to a Culture Embracing Pride Month, The Excellency of Holy Courage in Evil Times (eBook), The Glory and Happiness of the Saints in Heaven (eBook). choice. Chapter 23. For if John says, All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made, the prophet David too says, I tell my works to the King. And thus all those, either angers of God or hatreds, or whatever they are of this kind, being displayed for our medicine as the case teaches have arisen of wisdom, not from vice, nor do they originate from frailty; wherefore also they cannot avail for the corruption of God. Stemming from Modalism, Patripassianism believed that the Father suffered as the Son. So that being of both, He is both, lest if He should be one only, He could not be the other. 1. For since that is the beginning to other creatures which is unborn which God the Father only is, being beyond a beginning of whom He is who was born while He who is born of Him reasonably comes from Him who has no beginning, proving that to be the beginning from which He Himself is, even although He is God who is born, yet He shows Him to be one God whom He who was born proved to be without a beginning. For a law of resurrection is established, in that Christ is raised up in the substance of the body as an example for the rest; because, when it is written that flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God, it is not the substance of the flesh that is condemned, which was built up by the divine hands that it should not perish, but only the guilt of the flesh is rightly rebuked, which by the voluntary daring of man rebelled against the claims of divine law. of Scripture. And Him, as the author of this blessing, Jacob also signified by placing his hands crossed upon the lads, as if their father was Christ, and showing, from thus placing his hands, the figure and future form of the passion. For how can it be that I and the Father are one, if He is not both God and the Son? For they could be presented more diffusely and continued in a more expanded disputation, since the whole of the Old and New Testaments might be adduced in testimony that thus the true faith stands. Major Prophets And, nevertheless, while the world itself is said to have been founded after Him, it is found to have been created by Him; by that very divinity in Him whereby, the world was made, both His glory and His authority are proved. For the diversity in us of the materials of which we consist, is accustomed to arouse the discord of anger which corrupts us; but this, whether of nature or of defect, cannot subsist in God, seeing that He is known to be constructed assuredly of no associations of bodily parts. For it is so far manifest that He is declared in the Scriptures to be God, that many heretics, moved by the magnitude and truth of this divinity, exaggerating His honours above measure, have dared to announce or to think Him not the Son, but God the Father Himself. The reason for this is that we know, through the revelation of Jesus Christ, that in God there is a loving community of Persons -- Father, Son and Holy Ghost. demonstration that in the developed doctrine of the two natures and in it Though Gnosticism had various forms one of the most perniciousand one that is . OF CHRIST?" By which words He did not deny Himself to be God, but rather He confirmed the assertion that He was God. For what the Lord said, If you have known me, you have known my Father also: and henceforth you have known Him, and have seen Him, He said not as wishing to be understood Himself to be the Father, but implying that he who thoroughly, and fully, and with all faith and all religiousness, drew near to the Son of God, by all means shall attain, through the Son Himself, in whom he thus believes, to the Father, and shall see Him. current philosophies and religious views into which Christ was born. Now, however, by declaring that He has received sanctification from the Father, by the very fact of proving Himself to be less than the Father, by receiving from Him sanctification, He has shown that He is the Son, and not the Father. And indeed I could set forth the treatment of this subject by all heavenly Scriptures, and set in motion, so to speak, a perfect forest of texts concerning that manifestation of the divinity of Christ, except that I have not so much undertaken to speak against this special form of heresy, as to expound the rule of truth concerning the person of Christ. In Catholic theology there are at least three absolute mysteries. Apollos and Paul are not one and the same person? For He is above all that can be said. For when, to his wives Leah and Rachel, Jacob complained of the injustice of their father, and when he told them that he desired now to go and return into his own land, he moreover inter posed the authority of his dream; and at this time he says that the angel of God had said to him in a dream, Jacob, Jacob. Johannine Writings And if the sanguinary cruelty of men cannot do more against men than only to slay the body, how much more certainly it will not have power against Christ beyond in the same way slaying the body! Or, moreover, lest, because those things had arisen from earthly beginnings, they should naturally be inactive, from the rigidity of their origin, the hot nature of an interior spirit was added to all things; and that this nature concreted with the cold bodies might minister for the purpose of life equal measures for all. A new situation came about in the 16th century with the Reformation, which spelled the breakup of Western Christendoms previous doctrinal unity. Saint Irenaeus Against Heresies Complete - Archive.org Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:13). For it ceases to be that which it had been, and consequently begins to be what it was not; and therefore, reasonably, there remains always in God His position, in that without any loss arising from change, He is always like and equal to Himself. Moreover, he saw God, with whom he wrestled as with a man; but still indeed he held the man as a conqueror, though as an inferior he asked a blessing as from God. Because these two natures in Christ seemed to be mutually exclusive, they GenesisExodusLeviticusNumbersDeuteronomyJoshuaJudgesRuth1 Samuel2 Samuel1 Kings2 Kings1 Chronicles2 ChroniclesEzraNehemiahEstherJobPsalmsProverbsEcclesiastesSong of SongsIsaiahJeremiahLamentationsEzekielDanielHoseaJoelAmosObadiahJonahMicahNahumHabakkukZephaniahHaggaiZechariahMalachiMatthewMarkLukeJohnActsRomans1 Corinthians2 CorinthiansGalatiansEphesiansPhilippiansColossians1 Thessalonians2 Thessalonians1 Timothy2 TimothyTitusPhilemonHebrewsJames1 Peter2 Peter1 John2 John3 JohnJudeRevelation, Select a Beginning Point If Christ was only man, how does He say, And I know them, and my sheep follow me; and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish? He is all equal, and all everywhere. But what He is, He always is; and who He is, He is always Himself; and what character He has, He always has. [4], In modern times, the Austrian Catholic Anton Gnther, in an effort to refute Hegelian pantheism, declared three divine persons to be three absolute and distinct realities bound together only by their shared origin.[4]. Genesis 17:8 He is spoken of when it shows how a man wrestled with Jacob; He too, when it says: There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a leader from between his thighs, until He shall come to whom it has been promised; and He shall be the expectation of the nations. Therefore He was not man only, seeing that He was before the world. For such passions as these will rightly be said to be in men, and will not rightly be judged to be in God. in which place, if they will have it that the Father was seen at that time to have been received with hospitality in company with two angels, the heretics have believed the Father to be visible. The faith of the Church in the Trinity is expressed in the early creeds of the Church. (Matthew 22:42). Just because the Trinity is an absolute mystery, it does not follow that we cannot knowanythingabout it. And in the first place, we must turn the attack against them who undertake to make against us the charge of saying that there are two Gods. representatives reveal but which they make no effort to explain. But immortality is the associate of divinity, because both the divinity is immortal, and immortality is the fruit of divinity. Of Him the Apostle Paul says: For he who has not the Spirit of Christ is none of His. [2][1] It was again condemned as tritheism at the third council of Constantinople in 68081. Humans as we are, we cannot fully understand how the three divine Persons, though really distinct from one another, are one and the same God. THE TRUTH IS: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three different parts or components of God, but the three are all equally one God. In the last days, says the prophet, I will pour out of my Spirit upon my servants and my handmaids. Not to see death for ever! He was made a of Abraham, being about to be among the sons of Abraham. CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Blessed Trinity - NEW ADVENT Isaiah 65:2 Or that He would rise again from the dead: And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, and one who shall rise to reign over the nations; on Him shall the nations hope, and His rest shall be honour. For it is not suitable to nature, that what is conceded to the lesser should be denied to the greater. And over all these things He Himself, containing all things, having nothing vacant beyond Himself, has left room for no superior God, such as some people conceive. And when He had given him all things for his service, He willed that he alone should be free. Moreover, the Lord Himself: Why do you ask me concerning that which is good? If Christ is only man, why does He say, What if you shall see the Son of man ascending there where He was before? For who cannot understand that the divinity is impassible, although the human weakness is liable to suffering? Besides, He says that He is sent: so that by that obedience wherewith the Lord Christ came, being sent, He might be proved to be not the Father, but the Son, who assuredly would have sent had He been the Father; but being sent, He was not the Father, lest the Father should be proved, in being sent, to be subjected to another God. By this there is at once provoked, in the interests of the integrity of Or what substantial good can I promise myself from you, when I see that you have come in a phantasm and not in a bodily substance? God the Father? The Author Prosecutes the Same Argument. But because heretics, ever struggling against the truth, are accustomed to prolong the controversy of pure tradition and Catholic faith, being offended against Christ; because He is, moreover, asserted to be God by the Scriptures also, and this is believed to be so by us; we must rightly that every heretical calumny may be removed from our faith contend, concerning the fact that Christ is God also, in such a way as that it may not militate against the truth of Scripture; nor yet against our faith, how there is declared to be one God by the Scriptures, and how it is held and believed by us. One can easily see, then, from these ancient and contemporary heresies Thus, in this course we will consider the mystery of the Holy Trinity which is the central or basic mystery of the Christian faith. Blue Letter Bible is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. That the Same Truth is Proved from the Sacred Writings of the New Covenant. Since this name is nowhere conceded to angels, except that on either side the truth compels us into this opinion, that we ought to understand it to have been God the Son, who, because He is of God, is rightly called God, because He is the Son of God. This is definitely the Trinity of Nicea. In the 2nd century the Christian church became increasingly aware of the need to keep its teaching uncontaminated, and it devised criteria to test deviations. Each of the divine persons is GOD WHOLE AND ENTIRE, and there is one God. By whom are you sent? He is also an Angel, but He was destined of the Father as an Angel to announce the Great Counsel of God. Search the history of over 820 billion They are also related to false ideas about God deriving from the doctrines of the Stoics and Neo-Platonists about the aeons and the emanations from God. deviated from the mainstream of Christianity.". Trinitarian Heresies | Monergism Heresies are of recent formation, and cannot trace their origin up to the apostles. In Christianity, the church from the start regarded itself as the custodian of a divinely imparted revelation which it alone was authorized to expound under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Unitarians and some Pentecostals In the same way, there is a God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.. When we use analogies, we need to indicate these things so as to not lead to heresies. Omissions? Chapter 3 Be the first one to, Advanced embedding details, examples, and help, apologetics, Catholic, Christian, history, On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis, Terms of Service (last updated 12/31/2014).
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