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First things First
You cannot begin your
theology without your doctrine of God – all else is because God
is. Everything exists by virtue
of Him, out of Him, for Him, and in relationship with Him. Whatever you say about Him has
ramifications for all of reality.
Misunderstand God and you misunderstand everything.
Ok, but where do you
begin your doctrine of God?
This section is all
about maintaining what Athanasius considered to be the most crucial point
in his disagreements with the heretic Arius:
“Therefore it is more pious and
more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to
name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate.”
To put this another
way, we ought first to consider God as Trinity before we consider Him as
Creator.
The
issue can be seen in sharp relief when we understand exactly what Arius
believed. He wrote this in his Letter
to Alexander of Alexandria:
‘Our faith, from our ancestors, which we have learned also from you
is this. We know one God – alone
unbegotten, alone everlasting, alone without beginning… who begot an
only-begotten Son before eternal times, through whom he made the ages and
everything.’
Arius moves from
‘uncreated Creator’ to God’s Begetting-Begotten relationships with great
ease and one wonders how many Christians, even Christian ministers, would
today spot this as the grave heresy it most certainly is.
The problem here is
that the being of God is defined in advance of a consideration of the
only-begotten Son. And so, from the outset, Christ has been defined out
of full deity! There is no way
you could confess Jesus as ‘fully God’ once the definition of God is
stated as ‘alone
unbegotten.’ The Father and the
Son cannot be, for Arius, of one being.
They are of different orders of being – the Father defined as on
one plane (the unbegotten plane), the Son is on another (the begotten
(and, for Arius, created) plane). No matter how much Arius protested
that the Father and the Son were of ‘like being’ he had actually placed
them on opposite sides of the line which he had drawn to separate
God from everything else. For
Arius the Unoriginate-originate distinction was the ultimate demarcation
of full deity from all else. And
the Son was on the other side of that line.
The very heart of the
gospel is threatened here. With
Arius we have a fundamental disjunction between who Jesus is and who the
Father is. When Jesus claims in
John 10, ‘I and the Father are one’ this is meant to reassure His hearers
that what they hear Him saying and what they see Him doing are the very
words and works of God. To see
and lay hold of Jesus is to see and lay hold of the Father. For Arius to drive a wedge between
this one-ness means that 1) Christ’s revelation is not actually the
revelation of God and 2) Christ’s salvation is not actually the salvation
of God. To see and hear and trust
Jesus is still to be short of seeing, hearing and trusting God. We are, ultimately, left in the dark –
for revelation and for salvation.
And all this,
according to Athanasius, is because Arius has named God from His works
rather than naming Him from His Son. That is, he has begun with God as
Creator and not with God as Trinity.
Imagine two
scenarios:
Scenario 1) Arius sits down at the table with
Athanasius and says ‘God is a simple, undivided, unchanging, utterly
unique, self-sufficient, mathematically singular, uncreated Creator, do
you agree?’ Athanasius says
‘Agreed’. Then Arius says ‘And
you believe that Jesus is not only of ‘like substance’ but ‘the same
substance’ with this God who is defined as a ‘simple, undivided,
unchanging, utterly unique, self-sufficient, mathematically singular,
uncreated Creator???’
Athanasius’s head begins to hurt…
Scenario 2) Arius sits
down at the table with Athanasius and says ‘God is a simple, undivided,
unchanging, utterly unique, self-sufficient, mathematically singular,
uncreated Creator, do you agree?’
Athanasius says ‘No, you nincumpoop! We do not define God from
His works and call Him Maker, then try to map those same, philosophically
derived attributes onto Jesus (and the Spirit) and call it a
Trinity!! Arius, you and I do not
simply disagree about the identity of Jesus. We fundamentally disagree about God. You begin with uncreated Creator and
therefore can never come to understand Jesus. Because you do not begin with Jesus you simply cannot know
the first thing about God.”
Thus Athanasian trinitarianism
– orthodox Nicene trinitarianism – is not finally about seeking to secure
the deity of the Son (Arius believed Jesus was divine). It was even more about ensuring a Christian
doctrine of God. Agreement on the
deity of the Son is not actually a later stage in the argument about
God. We do not first agree on
some kind of God and then introduce His Son. Any concept of the one God that does not from the outset
include the mutual relations of Father-Son, begetting-begotten etc, bears
no relation to the living God. It
is Arian. Heresy.
Thus we return to
Athanasius’ plea: do not begin from God’s works and call Him Maker. Begin with His Son and call Him
Father!
The council of Nicea
followed Athanasius’ advice:
‘We believe in one God, The
Father Almighty, Maker…’
Before there was a
world, there was God. And this
God was, is and ever shall be the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Before we seek to know God in any
other way we must understand Him as He is in, with and for
Himself, that is, in His triune relationships. This page is simply about demonstrating this one simple but
crucial point.
Here are 13 disastrous
implications of beginning with ‘uncreated Creator’ before the
doctrine of the Trinity. In the
course of time I will explain and flesh out these concerns one by one:
1)
You will never
get to a Nicene trinity – you must deny ‘God from God’ – a begotten
deity. (This was the danger
Calvin courted (and those who have followed him.))
click here for more
2)
You make
God both dependent on creation and shut out from it
3)
You will
therefore never know God – that is, God in Himself.
4)
Faith
therefore becomes not a laying hold of God but of intermediary
pledges from the unknown God.
5)
Assurance
becomes impossible – the hidden and unreachable God determines all
6)
Salvation
becomes not a participation in God but a status conferred external to
Him.
7)
Apologetics
is given a place as non-Christians are also invited to name God from His
works.
8)
Evangelism
entails the impossible task of introducing Jesus into a pre-formed
deistic doctrine of God. “I
always believed in God, but the evangelist showed me how Jesus is also
that god-I’d-always-believed-in.” Jesus gets squeazed and dissolved into
the pagan’s god.
9)
In your
Christology you will uphold the fundamental incommensurability of
‘Unoriginate’ attributes and ‘originate’ attributes. Thus the Word cannot become flesh
and the fulness of the divine nature cannot dwell bodily in
Jesus. This is because Christ’s
bodily form does not allow for your pre-supposed divine attributes
(assumed according to the ‘Uncreated Creator’ definition of God). You will therefore ‘lock off’ certain
divine attributes from the realm of Jesus’ flesh – i.e. you will become
Nestorian.
10) You
will define God’s Glory in terms of aseity – making Him the most selfish
Being in the universe rather than the most giving.
11) Christ
crucified then becomes a bridge to God’s glory rather than the very
expression of it. (A theologia gloriae rather than theologia
crucis).
12) You
will consider “Glorifying God” to mean ‘what we give to Him’ – our
worship etc (works!) – rather than ‘being swallowed up in His communion
of other-centred love’ (faith!).
13) If God
is fundamentally an individual, the Christian life becomes
individualised. Instead it ought
to be communal – a participation with and among persons.
In
time we will address these implication with short papers on each
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