“Progress does not follow an upward straight line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and regression, evolution and dissolution,” is a shrewd observation by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Goethe refutes the idea that the march of time always brings progress and advancement. This even applies to the church. We have had times when the Church has advanced in her understanding of biblical doctrine, and we have had other times when her understanding has diminished, we see it throughout history in terms of the doctrine of God and, in particular, the doctrine of the Godhead.
The early church fought false teachers and doctrines to better understand what the Bible teaches about who God is and how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost relate to each other in terms of their existence and work. They reflected deeply and biblically on the biblical statement that we worship a God who exists in three people: the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost; In doing so, the Church defended biblical truth against three errors: modalism, arrianism, and semi-arism, but these errors have not disappeared, but have periodically reappeared throughout the history of the Church.
- Modalism [i] appeared in the late second and early third centuries when theologians promoted the doctrine of monarchism.
- Monarchism (from the Greek monkey.
- “Um”.
- And bow.
- “ruler”) is the heretical doctrine that teaches that the only God is simply a person who manifests himself in different ways at different times.
- A third century theologian named Sabellius (215 AD of the Father.
- Of the Son and of the Holy Spirit? (Mt 28:19).
- Instead of believing that there is one God in three persons.
- He affirms that there is one God in three ways.
- That is.
- God reveals himself sequentially as different people.
- Imagine an actor wearing different masks during a drama to represent different characters.
- This illustration is close to Sabelio’s vision that God used the Father’s mask and then the of the son.
- And finally that of the Holy Spirit.
- God worked in different ways.
- This point of view was called modalist monarchism.
- The Church Father Tertullian (155-240 AD) wrote his famous treatise.
- On the Trinity to show that the Bible teaches that we worship one God in three different persons.
- Other church fathers.
- Such as Athanasius (AD 296-373).
- Taught the coeternity and equality of the three persons of the Godhead.
Another 3rd-century theologian who taught errors about the doctrine of Christ and his relationship to the deity was Arrio (250-336 AD). The heresy associated with Arrio is Arrianism [ii], which is the false idea that Christ is not completely divine, but that there was a time when the Son of God (or Logos) did not exist. Ario supported his ideas by appealing to scriptures, such as Proverbs 8. 22: “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, before his first works Arrio believed that the Son of God was not also God, but a creature created by God the Father before the creation of the world. The son is, of course, God’s greatest creature. He became divine and participated in both creation and redemption of human beings. Aryan theologians have appealed to a selection of gospel passages to argue that the son’s divinity is inferior to that of the father, including John 14:28: “The Father is greater than me. “
A heresy linked to arrianism is semi-arianism. The semiannary theologians altered the teaching of Arrio, who believed that the son is a creature and is therefore not truly divine. Instead, the demigods believed that the Son is of a substance similar to that of the Father, that is, it is homoious (in Greek for “similar substance”). Orthodox theologians have maintained the biblical teaching that the Father and the Son are co-equal in their being and in their power. So the Son is not only of a similar substance (homoiousios), but of the same substance (homoousios).
Although the three heresies primarily concern the person of the Son, they also relate to the doctrine of the Trinity, because they affect the son’s relationship with the Father, touch on the vital biblical teaching about how God exists in three different people. the questions are not hollow speculation. Instead, they touch the very heart of our Christian beliefs about who Christ is.
Do we worship the incarnate God, as John teaches us in his gospel (John 1:1-18), who is co-eternal with his father, or do we worship a simple creature?The church took these extravagant teachings seriously and led them to various church councils. The Council of Nicea (325 A. D. ).
The Council of Constantinople (381 A. D. ) explicitly anathemated Arrianism in its first canon, and the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) . . . Consubstantial to the father in his divinity, who, framed?All forms of Arrianism and seminarismo. no are specific to a specific segment of the Church, but are they affirmed by the Orthodox Churches everywhere?These are affirmations in the beliefs of the (universal) Catholic Church.
Therefore, one might think that once these heresies were buried and that they were teachings dead for more than a millennium, the Church would no longer have to worry about them, but this is far from the truth. To take a J. R. R. Tolkien in The Fellowship of the Ring: “Always after a defeat and a pause, the shadow takes on another shape and grows back. “Or, in the words of the preacher, “What it was, is what it will be; and what he has done, will be remade, there is nothing new under the sun (Ec 1. 9), that is, the old heresies never die, they come back with new names, but with the same false teaching.
Today, modalism and arrianism have resurfaced in the teachings of the unique Pentecostal apostles and in the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses, respectively. Modelling meets Pentecostal unique apostolic defenders, as the name of the movement shows. The unique Pentecostals believe that there is only one, divine person and that the doctrine of the Trinity is not biblical. They believe that Jesus is the only person in the deity. Jesus survives in two ways: as a father in heaven and then, later, as Jesus, son of the earth. The Holy Spirit is not a person, but simply a manifestation of the power of Jesus.
Jehovah’s Witnesses look like Christians in many ways and even claim to worship Jesus. But, like the aryans of the early church, they believe that Jesus is a simple creature and not God equally and eternally. Jesus is the firstborn of all creation, but he is not a light of light, let alone the true God of the true God, that is, God incarnate. Therefore, jehovah’s witnesses reject the doctrine of the Trinity as well as the total divinity of the Son.
In recent years, semi-Arian teachings [iii] have been taken up as several high-level evangelical theologians have emerged to defend the Eternal Subordination of the Son. Proponents of this doctrine project the Son’s redeeming and voluntary submission to history. to eternity and argue that the Son submits eternally to the Father and is therefore eternally subordinate to him. therefore totally equal to the Father. Unlike the Historical Semiaries, modern proponents of the eternal subordination of the Son affirm that the Son is of the same essence (homoousians) as the father.
However, by placing different levels of authority and submission in the Divinity, they undermine their claim. Is it because divine authority is a property of divine essence, which means that different levels of authority suggest that the Son has a different divine essence?Less? Although not all advocates of the Son’s eternal subordination necessarily promote the eternal subordination of the Son in the same way, and although these lawyers do not necessarily attempt to deny equality of essence between the Father and the Son, they flirt with heresy when they say that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father.
Needless to say, the Church must always be vigilant to protect hesing hemselves from heretical teachings. It is true that many Christians unknowingly defend doctrinal errors because they do not understand the Bible. Mistakes can mark our doctrine, but when God teaches us the truth, we joyfully establish Heresy, on the other hand, it occurs when a person consciously rejects a central principle of the Christian faith, typically indexed by the doctrines listed in the Creed of Nicea: the doctrine of God, the Trinity, or Christ, for example. Make no mistake: modalism, arrianism and semitism are heresies. The Church must always be on guard against them and should always be willing to teach the truth of the scriptures and argue against heretical brothers and sisters through the discipline of the Church.
[i] Modalism is a Trinitarian heresy that says that God is one in essence and one in person. He affirms that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not three eternally distinct personal relationships, but three different ways in which God reveals Himself.
[ii] Arrianism is a Trinitarian heresy that says that the Son is the first and greatest creation of God the Father, but he is not himself the creator eternal God. Aren’t they the homoousious Son and Father (of the same essence), for the Son is ultimately a creature, a very exalted creature, but still a creature.
[iii] Semiarianism is a Trinitarian heresy that declares that the Son is more than a creature, but says that he is less than God, the Father. Instead of being homoousial (of the same essence) with the Father, the Son is homoious; (of similar essence) with the Father Historically, the Semians believe that the Son, though still divine, has less authority, power, wisdom, etc. than the Father.