Located on the east coast of Lake Iznik, Turkey, is the ancient city of Niceia. Just as Camp David offers the president of the United States a place of refuge from the problems of Washington and the White House, Niceea has also met the needs of the ancient emperors. Constantine used it as his summer palace. In 325 AD, he convened a large meeting of more than three hundred bishops and church leaders. They were called to discuss, debate, and finally declare the resolution of a controversy that haunted the early Church; a controversy that touches the heart of Christianity, the heart of the mission and the identity of the Church, the heart of the Gospel itself.
The controversy referred to the person of Jésus-Christ. La question that Jesus himself had asked himself in his time: “Who do you say I am?”(Mt 16:15), he resoned throughout the early church. From new Testament times to the late 200s, the question of Jesus’ humanity prevailed; in the 1930s, questions revolved around Christ’s divinity: is Christ fully God, a complete and absolute deity?
- In the 1940s and beyond.
- New questions will emerge.
- These referred to the union of the two natures.
- Divine and human.
- In a person of Christ.
- Another council.
- This time in Chalcedon in 451.
- Would be convened to address this very important issue.
Let us return to the first stage of the controversy of Christ: the debate about the humanity of Jesus, from the 100s to the 200s, although he died centuries ago, Plato’s shadow is largely projected on the philosophical thought of the first centuries of the twentieth century. Plato’s thinking dominated much of the ancient worldview and infiltrated the early church. One of Plato’s main doctrines is that matter, physical substance, is bad. Someone too influenced by Plato would soon come to the conclusion that God could never become flesh.
Those who had this view in the early church were called twelfths. Did Dokeo mean the Greek word “appear”. Did he argue the heresy of the endowment that Jesus appeared alone as a human being?He was by no way human.
A formidable group of Church fathers came together to denounce this heresy and strip the Church of all doctrinal ideas and teachings, including Tertullian, who lived around AD 200.
Think of all the scriptures you would have to conveniently ignore to deny the true humanity of Jesus. No baby born of Mary, no tired and hungry human being. No “suffering servant. ” No dying death on Calvary.
Perhaps no one understood the need for jesus’ humanity better than the author of Hebrews, who said, “Was it desirable that in everything he should become like his brethren, a merciful and faithful high priest to God?(Heb. 2. 17) How desperate we would be if Jesus were not completely human!
Tertullian, Ignatius, Irineu, Hipelito and other parents of the early church helped the church remain faithful to the Bible and contributed to the development of Orthodox Christianity during these first crucial centuries.
Another challenge arose in the early 300s, it all started with teaching an old man from the city of Alexandria named Arrio, now I’m going to have to be a little technical. The question revolves around three words about the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. Orthodox biblical teaching affirms the vision of homoousians. It’s not a word you read every day. Ousios is the Greek word meaning “essence”. The Latin equivalent is substantia, which translates directly as “substance”. The first part of the Greek word composed homoousios is homo, what does it mean?Same or “identical”. Therefore, this word means that Jesus is of the same substance as the Father, that Jesus is equal to the Father, that word was used to express the full divinity of Christ. Jesus Christ is completely God.
The second word is homoious. Homoi means “similar”. This view holds that Jesus is superior to human beings, but not equal to the Father. He is of a substance similar (but not the same substance) to that of the Father. The third word is heteroousious; it’s even worse. Consider Jesus to be of a totally different substance.
Although Arrio probably defended the heteroousians, he tended to be a little more subtle and deceptive, speaking as if defending the homoious, and that was at the center of the debate in Niceia: a letter, the i. Is the essence or substance of Jesus, homo exactly like that of the Father?Or is it a homoi, like the father’s?
The bishops of Nicaea concluded that only the homoousios lived up to the biblical teaching. The Nicene Creed declares that Jesus is “the true God of the true God, begotten without seed, of one substance with the Father. “
This creed doesn’t uncover new foundations. Far from that, it summarizes the enormous volume of biblical material on the person of Christ. The author of Hebrews begins by declaring, “Who is the glare of glory and the exact expression of his Being?[God] (Hb 1. 3). Paul says very directly that in Jesus he dwells bodily all the fulness of divinity (Cl 2:9).
The Creed of Nicea is an excellent example of systematic theology at its peak. Systematic theology aims to organize and summarize, not add or distort biblical teaching. Therefore, systematic theologians teach this doctrine in the church. These early bishops of the Church were systematic theologians. The creed developed by bishops in Nicea was their gift to the Church.
Worship is at the heart of church life. And at the center of our worship is Christ. Every Christian must ask himself: who do I love, who is this Christ at the center of my worship?The Creed of Nicea gives us a biblically rich and true answer.
After the Creed of Nicea, however, a contingent of the so-called Aryan bishops appeared, who won the favor of the sons of Constantine, who later became emperors. This seems to be a classic case of ‘take it, take it’. The bishops promoted the emperors and the emperors protected the bishops and used the power of the crown to crush the opposition. One of these opposing voices came from one of the true heroes of the early church, Athanasius of Alexandria.
You may have heard the phrase Athanasius versus mundum, which simply means “Athanasius against the world”. And so it was. Athanase spent more time in exile from his post as Bishop of Alexandria than in the exercise of his office; in addition to being bold, he also excelled at making the most of a difficult situation. Bishops. Athanase worked his whole life in the fight against a letter, fighting for homolysies against homoiousios. But it’s this little letter, this little i in the middle, that makes all the difference in the world.
Thanks to the work of atHanase and also a change in the political landscape, a council was convened in Constantinople in 381, where bishops affirmed the Creed of Nicea and the Aryan bishops were expelled from the church.
New controversies would arise in the 1940s. Here were heretical views on how the divine and human natures of Christ are united in one person. The church would address this problem in Chalcedon in 451, which would result in the Creed of Chalcedon. This creed gives the Church the wonderful teaching of Christ’s hypostatic union: that Christ is two natures in one person, who is fully God and fully human.
Despite these persuasive and persuasive beliefs, these heretical views of Christ have persisted over the centuries. John Quincy Adams [1] was more theologically orthodox than his father, John Adams. As a deist, the elder John Adams worshipped Jesus, but he did not recognize Him as God. John Quincy Adams once told his father in a letter that the relationship between his father’s vision of Christ and Christ’s true vision was like that of a cheap candle in relation to the sun; they weren’t even compared.
In 1923, J. Gresham Machen [3] faced false teachings about Christ. Machen once said, spiritually but confidently, that any vision of Christ that considers him less than infinite is infinitely inferior to the real vision.
Machen, John Quincy Adams, Athanasius, and many others have helped us first see what we should believe about Christ and why he makes all the difference.
We would be naive if we thought that the present and the next generation would automatically adopt an Orthodox Christology. The beliefs of Nicea and Chalcedon have sustained the church for centuries, summarizing biblical teaching. The sermons and books of the first parents of the church guided the early Christians in their theology and worship. We also have an obligation to answer the crucial question Christ asked the disciples: “Who do you say I am?”We too have an obligation to help others respond faithfully and accurately in the gospel. Nothing less is infinitely less.
This article is part of the December 2014 issue of Tabletalk magazine.
Translation: Joel Paulo Aragono da Guia Oliveira. Criticism: Vinicius Musselman. © 2016 Ministério Fiel. All rights reserved. Webpage: MinisterioFiel. com. br. Original: The historical context of Orthodox Christology.
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