Chapter 22: The Kingdom of Theology. The year 325 found the Church embroiled in a heated controversy over the nature of the Son of God and His Father. The main two proponents in this dispute were Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria, and Arius, an elder or presbyter in that same city. Viewing himself as a sort of universal bishop, Constantine took it upon himself to convene a worldwide council of bishops in the city of Nicaea in order to resolve this dispute. He even presided over the council.
Let me give you some background understanding about the nature of the Arian heresy discussed at the council. Ever since the first century, the Church had held to some basic understandings about the Father and the Son. These beliefs were well grounded in Scripture. To grasp the Church's historic teachings about the Father and Son, a person has to understand the difference between nature and order. In theology, nature or substance refers to the essence or class to which a person or creature belongs.
All humans are of the same nature or substance. No man or woman is any less human than anybody else. However, humans differ from one another as to order or positions of authority. The President has authority over the Vice President. These two persons are the same in nature, but they differ in order. Now, the Church has always taught that the Father and the Son are of the same nature or substance. The Son is not something foreign to the Father.
He does not have the nature of the angels, but rather He possesses the same nature as the Father. Both the Father and the Son are equally divine. The Son possesses true godhood, just as does the Father. However, there is a difference of order or authority between the Father and Son. Equality of nature does not mean equality of order. Just as there is a hierarchy of order between a husband and wife, there is a hierarchy of order within the Trinity.
Paul explained this, saying, "I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." The Father has authority over the Son. The Son is sent by the Father. The Son does the will of the Father, and the Son sits at the Father's right hand. This hierarchy of order cannot be reversed. But this difference in order in no way diminishes the Son's divinity.
When Christians do not understand the difference between nature and order, they end up with a confused understanding of the Trinity. And that was the problem with the fourth-century elder Arius. He confused nature and order. Because there is a hierarchy of order in the Trinity, Arius mistakenly believed that there is also a hierarchy of nature or substance. So he maintained that the Son is not of the same nature as the Father. Rather, he said the Son is somewhere between the angels and the Father.
As we have already seen, to clear up this matter, Constantine convened a worldwide council in the city of Nicaea. However, when the council of Nicaea first convened, the supporters of Arius soon saw that they were going to lose the debates, for they were heavily outnumbered. At that point, they made liberal concessions and asked for tolerance in light of the incomprehensible nature of the issues under discussion. They even agreed to use no language or expressions that are not found in Scripture.
However, instead of reaching out to Arius and his supporters in love working to end this theological division in the Church, the orthodox bishops received with contempt their concessions and their proposals for reconciliation. In fact, the bishops purposefully sought a solution that would force an irreconcilable wedge between the two parties. Yet, no orthodox bishop was willing to suggest that the council do what had previously been unthinkable: adding something to Scripture. So the council was at an impasse.
At this point, Constantine again intervened to help the Church. He suggested that the bishops change the simple creed that had served the Church for 300 years and add to it the word "homoousion" of the same nature, saying that the Father and Son were homoousion. The bishops soon accepted Constantine's solution and adopted this new creed. As a succinct statement of the divinity of Christ and of the relationship of the Father to the Son, I think the Nicene Creed is one of the best.
It accurately encapsulates what Christians have believed about the Son of God from the days of the apostles up through the time of Constantine. Nevertheless, Nicaea marks a major turning point in Christian history, a turn for the worse. That's because it introduced four new corruptions into the Church that took the Church further and further from the Kingdom of God and from original Christianity. 1. The Persecuted Become the Persecutors.
After the council of Nicaea, the Church rightfully excommunicated Arius, who is a "divisive man" teaching erroneous doctrines. In the first three centuries of Christianity, the matter would have ended there. However, Constantine went further and banished Arius from his home city of Alexandria to the province of Illyricum, across the Mediterranean Sea. Constantine then ordered all of the writings of Arius to be burned. But worst of all, he declared that anyone found with Arius' writings would be put to death.
Instead of protesting these measures, the bishops applauded them. Fourteen years before, Christians were the persecuted. Now they were the persecutors. Constantine came to believe that the most important duty of the civil magistrate was to preserve and support the Catholic faith. To Constantine, any heretics or schismatics who opposed his commands were nothing but obstinate criminals.
He eventually began taking almost verbatim the language from the decrees of Diocletian, who had inaugurated the last great persecution against Christians, and applying that language to various decrees intended to suppress heretics. This new type of persecution was far more poisonous in its effects than anything pagan Rome had previously wrought. This new persecution didn't target everyone who believed in Jesus as their Lord and Savior the way the pagan persecution had.
Rather, it targeted only those who the institutional Church labeled as heretics. To be sure, the Arians were heretics. But that didn't justify persecuting them. Moreover, many of those the Church persecuted thereafter were not heretics at all, but were instead genuine Kingdom Christians. This new persecution not only frequently targeted innocent Kingdom Christians, but it also bloodied and defiled the hands of the Christian persecutors themselves, dragging them down to the depraved conduct of the world.
Christians began to imagine they could use the tools of Satan if they did so for a godly purpose. This new persecution made it harder for the Church ever to be reformed or restored to its original purity. That's because any potential reformers were soon singled out as heretics and then silenced. By instituting Church-sponsored persecution, the council of Nicaea undid any good that would have otherwise come from the council. 2. Going Beyond Scripture.
In many ways, the impact the Nicene Council had on theology was even more serious than its impact on persecution. That's because the Nicene Creed made orthodoxy turn on a word that doesn't even appear in Scripture: "homoousion." This Greek word means "of the same nature," and it accurately describes the relationship of the Son of God to the Father, as we have discussed. I have no objection to the use of the word.
However, in making a word that is never used in Scripture the touchstone of orthodoxy, Nicaea opened a Pandora's box. That's because basically the Nicene Council was saying that Scripture is inadequate. It was saying that there are essential truths without which we cannot be saved that are not stated with the needed specificity in Scripture.
Instead of trusting God and believing that His Scriptures were adequate, the bishops at the first council of Nicaea had resorted to a human solution to resolve the Arian dispute. And the fruit that followed did far more damage to the Church than any damage Arius had done. Because the bishops had gone beyond Scripture, they almost immediately found it necessary to declare that the decision of the Nicene Council was inspired by God and was equal to Scripture.
In other words, special revelation had not ended with the apostles. After a hiatus of over 200 years, the Holy Spirit was supposedly again giving special revelation on the same level as Scripture. To this very day, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches expressly declare that the pronouncements of the Nicene Council and the other so-called ecumenical councils have the same authority as Scripture.
As the centuries rolled by, the Church added more and more extra-scriptural language to the dogma of Christianity. They even added language that was contrary to Scripture.
For example, 460 years later, in AD 785, another ecumenical council which also met at Nicaea made the following pronouncements: "Just as the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, so also the venerable and holy images, as well in painting and mosaic as of other fit materials, should be set forth in the holy churches of God and on the sacred vessels and on the vestments.
To these should be given due salutation and honorable worship, not indeed that true worship of faith, which pertains alone to the divine nature. But to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving cross and to the book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to the ancient pious custom.
For the honor which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who worships the image worships the subject represented in it." Thus we follow Paul, who spoke in Christ, and the whole divine apostolic company and the holy fathers, holding fast the traditions which we have received. We salute the venerable images. We place under anathema those who do not do this, anathema to those who do not salute the holy and venerable images, anathema to those who call the sacred images idols.
Scripture, as well as the early Church, had condemned the use of images. Now the Church condemned those who didn't use images. 3. Theology Becomes the Essence of Christianity. After Nicaea, the Church came to imagine that the essence of Christianity is theology. It supposed that persons can be Christians simply by giving mental assent to a list of doctrines, without a radical change in their lives. What's more, the Church was no longer satisfied with the basic theology of the Kingdom Gospel.
Rather, it now focused on fine points of theology that the ordinary Christian would probably not grasp. So Nicaea gave birth to a whole new type of Christian: the theologian or church father. And ever since the emergence of these theologians, the Church has not known a single year apiece free from theological controversies. The fourth-century bishop, Hilary of Poitiers, said, "The partial or total resemblance of the Father and of the Son is a subject of dispute for these unhappy times.
Every year, nay, every month, we make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries. We repent of what we have done. We defend those who repent. We anathematize those whom we defended. We condemn either the doctrine of others in ourselves or our own in that of others. And reciprocally tearing one another to pieces, we have been the cause of each other's ruin." The fourth-century witnessed quite a few church councils, and the fights between theologians became ever more vicious.
These theologians invariably ascribed nothing but virtue and pure motives to themselves, but they imputed nothing but evil and guilty motives to their opponents. Nobody was willing to believe that any errors held to by their opponents might be innocent or that their faith was perhaps sincere. No one approached his brother in love, trying to help him see the truth. Rather, theologians sought only to refute and condemn their opponents.
No wonder the secular Roman historian of that day, Ammianus Marcellinus, remarked that the enmity Christians had for each other surpassed the fury that savage beasts have against man. Within a century after Nicaea, the Church came to believe that simply studying the Bible was no longer sufficient to give someone an accurate understanding of the faith. It was also necessary to study the writings of these new church fathers and the decrees of various church councils.
Just because a man was godly and well-read in Scripture, it didn't mean that he was qualified to preach in the Church. What mattered was not a man's knowledge of what the Scriptures say, but rather his knowledge of what the Church says.
As the poison of this new Christianity worked its way through every fiber of the Church, eventually the Church declared that no one, no matter how godly they might be, could any longer preach the Gospel, whether inside or outside a church building, without official authorization from the Church. Preaching without a license became a crime punishable by imprisonment and even death. This new law was not necessarily because the Church was deliberately trying to keep people in darkness.
I think the Church's motives were sincere. Unlicensed preachers might end up misunderstanding the Scriptures and thereby mislead people, causing them to forfeit eternal life. But again, the Church was using human means to try to solve problems rather than trust in God's methods. 4. Turning the Bible into a Dangerous Book. In its eagerness to adopt extra-biblical definitions and intricate theology, the Church ended up turning the Bible into a dangerous book.
The Church imagined that Christians who read the Bible for themselves could not hope to arrive at the true doctrine. Such Christians would almost certainly fall into heresy. Christians could no longer listen to what Jesus himself said in plain language. Instead, they had to believe what the Church instructed them to believe. Eventually, the Church reached a point where it believed that a person could end up losing his soul by reading and believing the Scriptures.
As a result, in 1229, the Synod of Toulouse passed a canon law declaring, "Lay people are not permitted to possess the books of the Old and New Testaments, but only the Psalter, Breviary, or the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin. And these books are not to be in the vernacular language." The Bible had become a dangerous book. Somehow, the words of Jesus and his apostles were no longer safe for uneducated people to read.