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Mike Burke
 May 9, 07 - 12:59 AM |
To Al Jenke
In a blog post you entitled "The Arian Controversy," you claimed that all the evidence is on the side of the Arians because scripture refers to Our Lord as the only begotten Son of the Father. You also went on a long tirade against the perceived dogmatism of Trinitarians (apparently without realizing how dogmatic you were being.) What you failed to consider is that a man must reach a certain age before he can beget a child, and God is not a man. The Father did not have to reach a certain age before begetting the Son--and if He is without beginning (as I would assume we all believe), He could not in fact have reached a certain age before begetting a Son. Certainly not if time is part of His creation, and He created all things through His Son (as we're told in scripture.) This is why Trinitarians believe in what's called eternal generation. Does scripture have anything to say on this subject? Oh yes! In using Melchisedek as a type of Christ, Paul said the following: having neither beginning of days nor end of life, and being made like to the Son of God, doth remain a priest continually. (Heb. 7:3, Young's Literal Translation.) He uses this Melchisedek as a type of Christ precisely because the Hebrew scriptures contain no record of his birth or death, and his point is that Christ is actually without "beginning of days" or "end of life" (just as Melchisedek is seemingly, or typically.) There is in fact only one passage in the entire New Testament that could be taken to mean that Christ was created (or birthed in the way that you and your friends mean it), and that's Rev. 3:14--and without the biased translation of A.E Knoch and the JW's, it reads as follows: `And to the messenger of the assembly of the Laodiceans write: These things saith the Amen, the witness -- the faithful and true -- the chief of the creation of God (Young's Literal Translation.) I should also point out that the distinction you attempted to make between creation and birth is meaningless given the concordant teaching that all that exists came "out of God." I'll gladly debate this topic with you here, or on your blog if you wish |
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Darroll Evans
May 9th, 2007 - 6:19 AM |
Re: To Al Jenke
"The Arian Controversy" Arians believe that Christ Jesus is a limited semi-deity that has been created. That position completely ignores that God is “echad”(Deut 6:4). So? Echad is a Hebrew word that speaks of one in a non-singular view. A bunch of grapes are echad, but each grape by itself is not echad. The JW’s and the Concordant movement teach that Christ is a created being. The Bible teaches that Christ is God the Son. He is worthy of our worship (Rev 5:11-14, at al), and to worship any but God is anti-Christian (Matt 4:10). Now, when Jesus said to worship God alone, He was speaking from His position as a Human being and not from His position as part of the Trinity. We find that He did that on occasion, but that does not indicate that Christ was “created.” All it proves is that he could ‘rightly divide” the word of God…something many cannot do today. Arianism is an anti-Christian movement that seeks to degrade the Lord of glory. It is not a Christian movement. Within the “echad” that is the fullness of God are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, operating in a unity of purpose that language cannot explain, nor those who are not privy to His Spirit, can understand. Arianism was founded by the blind to lead the blind, and we know the result of that deception. When the Bible says explicitly: John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. JW’s, the Concordant movements and all other Arians deny Scripture! Darroll |
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Darroll Evans
May 9th, 2007 - 6:45 AM |
Re: To Al Jenke
John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. Arianism is a total and absolute denial of that fact. Arians teach that Christ Jesus was “made.” However, the Bible tells us unequivocally that Christ made all that was made! If He made all that was made, and IF Arians actually use that concept, they must also believe that Christ Jesus “made” Himself. Do you see how ignorant Arianism is? At its core is a denial for the Holy Word (Capital W) of God. If Christ Jesus made all that was made, He cannot be “made” or created. Creation is a making. Arianism is illogical! Darroll |
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Mike Burke
May 9th, 2007 - 11:09 AM |
Re: To Al Jenke
Thank you Darroll. There's also the fact that Elohim (the Hebrew word for God) is plural. Though it is often used with singular verbs and adjectives, there are the following exceptions: Then God (Elohim) said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." (Gen. 1:26.) And the LORD God (HaShem Elohim) said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." (Gen. 3:22.) While those who follow AEK totally ignore the scriptural fact that God is Echad, those who claim to follow Alexander Thomson totally ignore the equally scriptural fact that God is Elohim. |
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Mike Burke
May 9th, 2007 - 1:21 PM |
Re: To Al Jenke
P.S. There is a moral dimension to this discussion that is often overlooked. If God's Son was created perfect (and the rest of us could have been), evil and sin can only exist because God arbitrarily willed them to exist. To say that He wills them only as a means to an end (i.e. to achieve the highest good of His creatures) becomes meaningless if one believes that Christ was created--and this view truly makes God the author of evil. |
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Eystein
May 17th, 2007 - 6:40 PM |
Re: To Al Jenke
I agree. The knowledge of good and evil cannot be created by fiat, it must be experienced. The triune God has this knowledge because he is timeless, but a created being with a beginning of consciousness must gain it through learning, suffering and overcoming. This Christ did as man, but not as God. As you and Talbott say, a perfect person cannot logically be created on command. I concur. I would like to point out that the historical Arius has been misunderstood throughout the centuries due to his contemporaries’ understanding of his doctrines. He was mistaken no doubt but Arius did not contest with what we today understand as Trinitarianism, but a form of Trinitarianism which had emerged among some Christians at the time of Arius we now would call Tritheism. This doctrine involved that Christ was unbegotten and that the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Father. The Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit were thought of as three independent members of the “specie” God. Arius was right to contest this, but he failed to recognize the truth of the Trinitarianism of other contemporary theologians. Arius did not believe that Christ was created at a point in time; he believed he was generated from the very being and nature of God before time was, but he ignorantly referred to this as a making. I think this should be known before we judge him too harshly. The Arian controversy helped the Church to develop the truer Trinitarian views of the eternal generation of the Son, the Spirit as eternally proceeding from the Father and the Father as in this sense the Eternal Source (not the maker or creator) of the Son and the Spirit, although there is no ontological distinction between the three; “they” are all eternally of the same essence and nature. They are all fully one God (one Being. We must not abandon the doctrine of divine simplicity), not three members of the class God. I still prefer to refer to God as He, and not as They. Since we are humans, He can only be understood by the way He is revealed to us. For this reason I find this formula helpful in understanding how the divine persons relate to each other in revelation: We believe there is one God, whose nature is love; revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ, by one Holy Spirit of grace (from the Winchester profession of 1803). I have also found helpful the doctrine of perichoresis: the Divine dance of Love; the co-indwelling, co-inhering, and mutual interpenetration of the divine persons. They are in this way One in the most intimate way possible; one Being of love. As for the question of whether it is right to speak of Christ as the Son of God prior to his incarnation, it is true that in the Scriptures he is referred to as the Word or Wisdom of God before he became flesh, but I think we should acknowledge that we are dealing with images here. Prior to his incarnation God could not have literally been Christ’s father but their relationship could still be said to be that of Father and Son. Also, given the virgin birth God could be said to be the Father of Christ literally in the incarnation and since the incarnation is the most central part of the revelation of the Word and Wisdom of God to us, the Son of God is the most appropriate title of the second person of the Trinity. God bless. |
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Mike Burke
May 17th, 2007 - 7:09 PM |
Re: To Al Jenke
Thank you Eystein (good to hear from you again.) I never heard that take on Arius before, but I'll take your word on it. God Bless. |
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Eystein
May 19th, 2007 - 1:15 PM |
Re: To Al Jenke
Well, it really is impossible to know for certain what Arius himself taught since, if I'm not mistaken, most if not all of his writings were destroyed. I'm not at all claiming that Arius’ teachings were even consistent with later Trinitarian views, but it should be known that his reasons for objecting to the trinity were probably understandable. On the other hand, it is not necessarily probable that he would prefer any other Trinitarian doctrine to his own Unitarianism. He would probably object to any idea of a triune God, but since he is no longer around for questioning we should not concern ourselves with such questions. No form of Arianism is consistent with Trinitarianism, let that be said. I would also like to correct what may be considered a mistake in my explanation of perichoresis. It is commonly understood as a divine dance because of the similarities between the word perichoresis (with a long o, omega) meaning circumincession, and the word perichoresis (with a short o, omicron) meaning dance. Describing it as a dance may be misleading and was not intended by those who developed the doctrine.It was meant to explain the intimate oneness of the three persons as dwelling in each other, based on such texts as John 14, 10, and not as a form of dance. |
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