athanasius ‘on the incarnation’: a summary

The Church Fathers, pt (iii).  Taken from ‘On The Incarnation’ by Athanasius.  

See ‘Athanasius: the most important gospel defence ever’  for the historical background to his argument.

1. Creation and the Fall

Man was created by God in his image: 

For God is good—or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, He made all things out of nothing through His own Word.

Man was given one place and one rule:

But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things—namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. 

Man through rebellion was corrupted, to return to non-existence:

For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. 

 

2. The Divine Dilemma.  3 problems:

(i) Man wasn’t created for corruption and non-existence.  But God couldn’t go back on his word of judgement.  What was the solution?  Not mere repentance.  Only the Word of God.

athanasius: the most important gospel defence ever

The Church Fathers, pt (ii).  From ‘The Story of Christian Theology’ by Olson.  

Athanasius (the “Black Dwarf”) succeeded his teacher Alexander as Bishop of Alexandria.  He was controversial in his time, and Luther’s axiom could be applied to him: “Peace if possible, but truth at any cost!”

The Council of Nicaea in 325 meant to end the Arian controversy, but was a catalyst for more dispute.  The ambiguous language of its Creed led to various sides claiming it a victory for themselves.  In particular, a controversial subject was the use of the word homoousios (meaning ‘cosubstantial’) to describe the relationship and divinity of the Father and Son.  

Constantius (son and successor of Constantine), desiring of peace, seeked a compromise by suggesting replacing the word with homoiousios, meaning ‘of a similar substance’, ie. not identical (to combat Sabellianism) but possibly not the same (to appease the Arians).  This was acceptable to many.  Athanasius, however, refused.  

Despite the difference in the words being only one letter, Athanasius knew that the theological difference was huge; one meant the Son was God, the other meant the Son was like God.  Athanasius saw that, for the sake of salvation, the Son needs to be God and not just be like God.  As a result, Athanasius suffered 5 exiles – 17 years out of his 46 as bishop; but he stood his ground, in possibly the most important defence of the gospel ever.  

arius v. alexander: a fight for the gospel

The Church Fathers, pt (i).  From ‘The Story of Christian Theology’ by Olson (IVP).  

In the 4th century, the dispute between the world’s two major theological schools (Alexandria and Antioch) started to simmer.  The dispute originated over Origen, who was in two minds about the nature of Jesus: on the one hand, he believed Jesus was equal with the Father, but on the other hand subordinate to the Father.  Alexandrians and Antiochenes both claimed to be in true agreement with Origen, but emphasised different sides (equality/divinity and subordination/humanity respectively).  There was, however, agreement over the nature of God’s immutability, which stemmed from Greek philosophical thought.  

Arius, educated in Antioch but teaching in Alexandria, challenged Bishop Alexander on his teaching of the divinity of the Logos (the Son of God, who took on human form in the person of Jesus Christ).  Arius accused Alexander of promoting Sabellianism and denying Jesus’ humanity.  Arius captured the public imagination and the dispute led to public marches (with banners stating ‘There was when the Son was not!’) folk songs and even riots on the street, with mobs on his side who probably didn’t understand the theological issues at stake.  

The two key elements of Arius’ thought about God and the Logos are these: First, God is by nature removed from creatureliness, and if the Logos became human in Jesus Christ, he must be a creature.  Second, salvation is a process of being joined with God by grace and free will, and if Jesus communicates salvation to us, it must be something he accomplished by grace and free will in a manner we can emulate; and if he was God, then salvation would not be something he could accomplish.

Alexander needed to respond, and did so with a Synod in 318 (where 100 bishops condemned Arius’ stance), and in argument.  He argued along the line of immutability, and thus undermined one of the main Arian arguments; he argued that if there was a time when the Son was not, then there was a time that the Father was not a father, and so by claiming this you are undermining God’s immutability.  

Arianism was such an issue to Alexander because he saw how important the deity of Christ was to salvation.  Only if Jesus is fully God and fully man are we saved, and Arianism was denying the former.  

The dispute was also, however, an issue to the Emperor Constantine.  He hoped that Christianity would be the glue to hold his shaky Empire together, and yet its leaders were divided.  So he sought to solve it and stepped in, by arranging the first ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325.  Arguably it caused more dispute than it resolved, and resulted in Athanasius making what has been described as the most important defence of the gospel in the history of the world…

why study historical theology?

Part 1 of … on Historical Theology.  Taught by Mike Reeves for the UCCF staff study programme.  Listen to the talks here 

 

 

Church history / historical theology: what’s the difference?

 

Church history = what has happened in history to/by/with the church

Historical theology = not just about what happened, but history of what people have believed. 

Generally, people focus on the former; the benefit – we get to see how the Lord is sovereign in all history.  Instead we’ll focus on the latter, so that through understanding what they think we can access great theologians quickly and not scarily.  Eg persecution – not just what happened, but what did the early church say about the persecution they were going through. 

As a staff team we’ll work our way through the centuries over next couple of years.  Here: up to 200 AD.  Firstly, the Apostolic Fathers, followed by  Justin Martyr and Iranaeus. 

 

Why study dead theologians?

 

Back in the summer I was in a class of bible students encouraging them to read dead theologians (eg CS Lewis introduction to Athanasius and the incarnation – read!).  When I appealed, one student challenged me: “Are you suggesting that the bible doesn’t have all I need to know?  Are you denying sola scriptura?”  My response: what are you doing here?  If you can read your bible on your own, why are you here?  Historical Theology is like having a bible study with the greats.  Have lunch with Luther!  Theology is really done as a community; we know God together.  So in Historical Theology we want to go to the great ones and find out what the Holy Spirit has taught them that he hasn’t taught us yet.  So we want to learn from these guys. 

However, we also want to cultivate a critical mind.  If one tendency is to reject them, another is to deify them, eg ‘Augustine is papal authority who we can’t answer’.  Instead – look critically at these guys; to see that there are problems even in the greats, and good things in the non-greats, so that big names don’t hold such sway – that’s the goal of cultivating this critical mind. 

 

Why look at the early church? 

 

(1) Their situation is remarkably similar to our situation today.  In first two centuries: church persecuted, pluralist society, no idea of Christendom – it was just a persecuted cult. 

(2) Facts about how the early church developed are becoming very important in apologetics.  Eg Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ makes claims about the corruption of Christianity in the first few centuries due to Constantine, that Nicea decided canon of scripture and discarded 80 gospels etc.  We just need to know this stuff to know it’s rubbish!

 

The best way to study this is to try to look at these guys as objectively as possible. Because: they can often seem wrong/weird to start with, and it’s easy to condemn them straight off.  OR it’s easy to loot these guys for good quotes to back up my position, without studying and earning these guys – just filling up my ammo store with big weapons to shoot people down! 

This means: try not to pre-judge/quickly judge.  May be uncomfortable; hang in with them to understand why they say what they say.  Stress: these are their words, not mine!  These are introductions, not final conclusions about them. 

There are full notes out there somewhere, with a timeline at the back. 

how to be a heretic: an introduction to 5th century christology

Part 1 of 3 on the Doctrine of Revelation, taught by Mike Reeves on UCCF Summer School with the South massive.  Listen to it here.

In church history, around the 4th-5th century AD, there was a big debate in Christology (the study of how Jesus could be God and man).  This is a crucial subject as it affects all other doctrine, as we shall see when we consider the doctrine of revelation and Scripture (to follow).