Cruelty of Heresy
Class 2
Trinitarian Heresies
1) May we not be so anxious about earthly things, yet love the things heavenly. In the Name of God the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. AMEN.
What think you about this prayer…is it OK or is here a problem? Why?
+Allison makes the point in his book that heresies actually limit our view of God – “They shorten the bed and narrow the sheets”.
2) Trinitarian heresies
a) Modalism (also known as Sabellianism, Monarchanism or Patripassainism)
i) Primarily a Western heresy designed to defend monotheism against tritheism.
ii) Tends to deny personal distinctiveness of a divine Son and Holy Ghost.
iii) Misunderstands the economy of God.
iv) Comes in two (opposing) forms:
(1) Dynamic or Adoptionistic
(a) Jesus was a mere man endowed with the Holy Spirit.
(i) Denied by the Church (Hippolytus) as an attempt to rationalize the Gospel to Hellenistic thought and philosophy.
(b) The Logos (the Word) was the inherent rationality of God
(c) The Holy Spirit is simply a manifestation of the Father.
(d) Denied the personal subsistence of the preincarnate word – used the word homoousia – one substance.
(e) Came to term Patripassainism – the Father Suffers – it was God the Father who became incarnate, suffered and died on the cross.
(2) Modalistic or Monarchianism (Sabellianism)
(a) A “divine Monad who projected himself progressively as
(i) Father – Creator and Lawgiver
(ii) Son – Redeemer
(iii) Holy Spirit – Giver of Grace
(iv) Episcopal “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer”
All three were simply different modes of revealing the same divine person.
b) Arianism
i) Named after Arius, an African priest born @ 270-290 AD.
ii) Is the most troublesome and persistent of heresies
(1) Condemned at first Council of Nicea in 325
(2) Rationalist Christology
(a) God was perfect and unchangeable…therefore how could his substance be shared with another
(b) Since God was immutable, Christ must have been created.
(c) A Father must logically precede a son.
(i) “There was when he was not”
(ii) Christ is not pre-eternal. He was the first of the created beings.
(iii) Christ was mutable – he grew, matured, changed and died.
iii) The heresy was ascendant through much of the 4th century.
(1) Five times Athanasius – the champion of orthodoxy – was driven into exile.
iv) Orthodox counterattack:
(1) Homoousia vs homoiousia
(2) Athanasius taught that “only God, very God truly God Incarnate could reconcile and redeem fallen mankind to holy God.
(3) Cappadocian’s – Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus
(a) Divided the concept of substance (ouisa) from the concept of person (hypostasis) – God is one substance and three persons.
(4) Creed reaffirmed in Council of Constantinople in 381.
(5) Continued battles:
(a) Visagoths in northern
(b) Jehovah’s Witness
(c) Unitarianism
c) Islam -
d) Macedonianism (pneumatomachi – Combators against the Spirit) – Holy Ghost is a creature
e) Manichaeism – duality – Evil god in OT and loving god in NT
i) Central in the Manichaean teaching was dualism, that the world itself, and all creatures, was part of a battle between the good, represented by God, and the bad, the darkness, represented by a power driven by envy and lust.
f) Tritheism/Polytheism
i) Each of the three are separate and distinct God’s
ii) Mormonism teaches that there are many God's in the universe but they serve and worship only one of them. The godhead for earth is to them really three separate gods: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Father used to be a man on another world who brought one of his wives with him to this world - they both have bodies of flesh and bones. The son is a second god who was literally begotten between god the father and his goddess wife. The holy ghost is a third god. Therefore, in reality, Mormonism is polytheistic with a tritheistic emphasis.
g) Deism – God is singular and remote. At most he was perhaps the “first cause” but has since left creation alone – “God wound up the clock of the world once and for all at the beginning and has no need to interfere any further”..
3) So what’s right? – Trinitarianism
a) God is three persons with one substance making the Godhead – within the one essence of the Godhead we have three “persons” who are neither three gods nor three modes or parts of God. Rather they are coequally and coeternally God.
b) Augustine: “without the Trinity there could be no fellowship or love in God. The divine Trinity involving an interrelationship in which the dive perfections find eternal exercise and expression independent of the creation of the world and man”.
4) What’s a right explanation?
a) How about the opening prayer?
b) How about “ice, water, steam
c) Rationalists who object are interpreting the Creator in terms of the creature – i.e., materially or mathematically.
d) How about St Patrick & the Three Leafed Clover?
Athanasian Creed
1. Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith;
2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
3. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;
4. Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
5. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
6. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.
7. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.
8. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated.
9. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.
10. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal.
11. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal.
12. As also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible.
13. So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty.
14. And yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty.
15. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God;
16. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
17. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Spirit Lord;
18. And yet they are not three Lords but one Lord.
19. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord;
20. So are we forbidden by the catholic religion to say; There are three Gods or three Lords.
21. The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten.
22. The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor created, but begotten.
23. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.
24. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits.
25. And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another.
26. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal.
27. So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.
28. He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.
29. Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
30. For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man.
31. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world.
32. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.
33. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood.
34. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ.
35. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God.
36. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.
37. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ;
38. Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead;
39. He ascended into heaven, He sits on the right hand of the Father, God, Almighty;
40. From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
41. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies;
42. and shall give account of their own works.
43. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.
44. This is the catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved.
