My topic tonight is what the early Christians believed about the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. But this isn't a history lesson. The reason we're talking about this subject is so we can learn from the early Christians. Now, when I use the term early Christians, I'm referring to Christians who lived before the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. And I'm particularly referring to Christians who lived between the years 100 and 200 AD. That is, during the first century after the death of the apostle John.
Well, why does it matter what the early Christians believed? It matters because they were in a much better position than we are to understand the New Testament correctly. For one thing, some of these men were personal disciples of the apostles. They heard the apostles orally teach. They were in a position to be able to ask them questions," Hey, what did you mean here, John, when you wrote such-and-such?" Others of the writers we'll be quoting from were only one generation removed from the apostles.
To my knowledge, every church historian acknowledges that doctrines changed over a period of time, that what Christians taught, say, in the year 800 A. D. was different than what they taught in the year 150 AD. And what they taught in the year 1800 had undergone even more changes. It's sort of like a river. In many places in the world, rivers are polluted, but the further you go upstream to the actual source of the river, the purer the water becomes.
Well, it's the same thing when we go through the stream of time, back to the New Testament period, that the closer you get to it, the purer the doctrine is. It's common sense. Unless we want to think that the apostles were such poor teachers that their students forgot everything they had been taught no sooner than the apostles died. Another huge advantage the early Christians had over us is that they spoke the same koine Greek that the apostles spoke and that the apostles wrote in.
I do a lot of historical research, and one of the things I've noticed when I read documents, say, from the 1700s or 1600s, is that English has gone through quite a change from the time that those men and women wrote. They use words that we don't use any longer at all, but more importantly, that in their day, various words had meanings that they no longer have today. The words are still around, but the meaning of it has changed. I mean, just in my lifetime, one example I can throw out is the word gay.
When I was a boy growing up, gay meant happy. It was a common word used all the time. Today, the word" gay" means" homosexual." Now, it can still be used to mean happy, but most of the time when I see the word" gay" in print, it's talking about homosexuality. It's not talking about being happy. So you can imagine the changes that Greek has undergone in what has now been 2,000 years since the New Testament was written. Now, New Testament scholars, they don't study modern Greek, they study New Testament Greek.
But the question is, how do they know what a word meant in the year 50 AD? How can they know that a word changed meaning from, say, the time that Plato or Aristotle wrote, and the time the apostles wrote? Or how did they know that the apostles didn't use it in a special sense that was different from the classical writers? The truth is they don't.
In fact, one of the things I've noticed about reading the early Christian writings is that oftentimes I realize that they are understanding the New Testament Greek differently than what our commentators and so-called scholars, how they understand it. Often the early Christians are clearly understanding it differently than the way those passages are translated in our Bibles. So if we're seeking truth, we have every reason to want to know how the early Christians understood the New Testament.
What's more, the early Christians lived before there was any major controversy on the subject of the Father and the Son, or any definition from a church council. And I can't overemphasize the significance of this. What happens in theology is very similar to what happens today when a certain topic or issue falls under the category of political correctness. Once that happens, people are afraid to honestly express their thoughts on the subject.
Particularly if they hold a position of importance, because they know they're going to get in trouble and will likely lose their job. So people can no longer talk openly and honestly on that subject. It has been the same way throughout church history. Once a controversy arises concerning a doctrine or a practice, then invariably a religiously correct position develops. And if you don't hold to that religiously correct position, then you're denounced as a heretic.
If you hold a position of authority in the church, you're removed from office. And throughout much of church history, you were imprisoned or burned at the stake. So once a doctrine has received a religiously correct definition, well then all open discussion and inquiry ends. Nobody is free to just do a search for truth without risking his life in years past and today without being attacked as a heretic. See, that's not the kind of atmosphere for anyone to be able to find truth.
Even worse than that, throughout Christian history, once a controversy arises over a doctrine, the historic teaching that Christians have always believed about that doctrine inevitably changes. That may sound strange, but let me explain to you why. I remember in the first art class I took as a boy, our teacher explained to us three primary colors, red, blue, and yellow, and that green is made up of equal parts of yellow and blue.
Now, picture in your mind, the doctrine of the apostles, the teaching of the apostles on any given subject, picture it as a green road that extends outward in time from the first century. But over time, somebody decides that he better understands a particular doctrine than what the Church has been teaching for centuries. So he moves out of the green over into the yellow, arguing for a particular position. Well, then a controversy arises.
And in trying to counter the yellow heretics arguments, the ones who are trying to defend the historic faith, they end up moving to the opposite side over into the blue. The two sides polarize. And so whichever side wins in the end, the original Christian faith has changed. So the cure is as bad as the disease. Either way, you've lost the historic faith. So if a person wants to discover what the authentic historic Christian teaching was on any subject, he has to go to the period before there was a controversy.
This means if we want to discover the authentic historic doctrine of God and His Son, Jesus Christ, we have to go to the period before the Nicene Council. So this is another reason why all Christians should be familiar with what the Christians believed about the Father and the Son in the first century or two after the apostles, because there was no raging controversy going on at the time.
However, once it became a controversy, which is generally known in history as the Arian controversy, then what you see are people polarizing, taking opposite sides, and changing what was originally believed. Not only that, something I find rather sad is that ever since the Arian Controversy and the Nicene Council, very few people can talk about the Father and the Son without projecting on their opponents all sorts of evil motives and denouncing them as deliberate blasphemers.
I say it's sad because my own experience in talking with Christians of all varieties is that I have yet to come across a person who has any desire to deliberately malign either the father or the son. What I see are people trying to understand and express what they sincerely believe the New Testament is teaching. I haven't seen anyone with evil motives. What's more, it seems like virtually all Christians have forgotten what Jesus Himself said at Matthew 12:31 and 32.
He said," I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men." Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come. So Jesus Himself said that even blasphemy against Him or His Father will be forgiven.
Now, I'm not so sure that a sincere misunderstanding of the nature and the relationship of the Father and the Son constitutes blasphemy against them. But if it does, Jesus has told us it will be forgiven. So if God is going to forgive errors, who are we to withhold forgiveness? Another scripture that so many seem to have forgotten is Matthew 7:1 and 2.
Here Jesus said," Judge not that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you." Now, I can hardly believe how so many professing Christians are so ready to deny eternal life to those who misunderstand the Father and the Son. Because where does that leave them if it turns out that they themselves have an improper understanding? Don't they realize that they've just written their own death warrant?
If they deny salvation to those who can't properly explain the Father and the Son and their relationship, then they've denied salvation to themselves if their own understanding is wrong. It's not me saying this, this is Jesus Christ saying that.
The reason why this is such a serious matter is that from my conversations with both ministers and everyday Christians, and from the many Christian books I've read, I've come to the realization that very few Christians actually have a correct understanding of who the Father and the Son are, and what their relationship is to each other. Now, when I say that, I don't mean that they have a different understanding than I do, as if what I believe makes any difference.
Rather, I mean that what they believe is quite different from the historic faith that was believed in the beginning. And you see, we don't have to guess what the early Christians believed about Jesus and His Father, because there is probably no other topic that they wrote so much about. Their understanding of the Father and the Son is revealed in virtually every writing we have from the pre-Nicene church, and there is a remarkable uniformity in what all the various writers say.
Not only that, one of the things that is so reassuring is that what the early Christians believed about Jesus and the Father fits the totality of everything the Bible teaches on that subject. There are no problem Scriptures in their understanding of the Father and the Son. There's no verses that they have to hide under the rug. No, it fits at all. In explaining to you what the early Christians believed, I'm going to be reading to you a number of passages from their writings.
In doing so, I want to emphasize upfront that the excerpts I'm going to be reading to you are representative of what they all say. You see, a person can proof text the early Christian writings to make them seem to say virtually anything that that person wants them to say, particularly about Jesus and His Father.
By the term proof texting, I'm referring to the practice of grabbing a quotation here, grabbing another one way over somewhere else, and then using them in such a way that you're misrepresenting what they actually believed. I've been writing and lecturing on what the early Christians believed for over 20 years now. And I've discovered that many Christians don't like what the early Christians believed because it upsets their apple cart.
But I have yet to have had anyone accuse me of misrepresenting what they believe, and I've never had anyone say that what they taught doesn't fit the Scriptures. Let's begin by looking at what the early Christians required everyone to believe in order to be baptized. Now, you might be surprised at its simplicity. Anyway, here was the typical statement of faith.
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, or sometimes His only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended to Hades, on the third day, rose again from the dead, ascended to heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Universal Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Now, that was all the theology you needed to believe when Christianity was just a few decades removed from the apostles. That's because the focus of Christianity at that time was on an obedient love-faith relationship with God and with His Son, it wasn't on theology.
Now, when I say that was all the theology you had to believe, I don't mean that that was all the theology they had, or that was the sum total of everything they believed, by no means. So tonight we're going to be looking at all of what they taught about Jesus and His Father, even though you didn't have to grasp everything I'm about to explain in order to be considered an Orthodox Christian. Let's begin by talking about what they believed about the Father.
Let's go back to the first line of that statement of faith that I just read to you. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. Now as brief as that sentence is, it says a lot. First, it demonstrates that when the early Christians talked about God, they always began with the Father. Second, that short little line demonstrates that they understood that God the Father Almighty is not the same person as His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
They are two distinct persons. Of course, that sentence I read to you is basically just a repeat of 1 Corinthians 8:6, which says," For us, there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live." The early Christians believe that the God of the Old Testament is in fact the Father.
For example, Irenaeus, an early Christian who wrote about the year 170 or 180, he said," He whom the Mosaic Law proclaimed as God, the same as he who Christ pointed out as the Father." The early Christians also believed that it was not the Father who came to earth, but His Son.
As Justin Martyr put it," He who has but the smallest intelligence will not venture to assert that the maker and father of all things, having left all super celestial matters, was visible on a small portion of the earth." Justin Martyr wrote around the year 150 and 160 AD. Now, one of the biggest distinctions between the Father and the Son that the early Christians stressed is that the Father is unbegotten. Here are just a few representative quotations.
Justin Martyr said," We follow the only unbegotten God through His Son." Tertullian, who wrote around the year 200, said," So far as a human being can form a definition of God, I present one that the conscience of all men will also acknowledge that God is the great supreme, existing in eternity, unbegotten, unmade, without beginning, without end." Arnobius, a Christian apologist, which was a Christian who defended the Christian faith to the pagan Romans, he said this," Speaking of the Father, you are illimitable."
In other words, you cannot be limited, unbegotten, immortal, enduring forever.
God yourself alone. No bodily shape can represent you, nor any outline delineate you. Your virtues are inexpressible, and your greatness is undefinable. You are unrestricted as to locality, movement, and condition. In short, concerning you, nothing can be clearly expressed by the meaning of human words. Some of the early Christian writers used the Greek term autotheos in referring to the Father. And that could be translated God of Himself, the self-existent God, the God without origin.
They frequently refer to the Father as the unbegotten God. And they all understood that the verse in 1 Timothy 6:16 is talking about the Father, where it says," Who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power?" Now, ironically, some commentators today say that that passage is talking about Jesus. But thousands of humans saw Jesus. Nobody has ever seen the Father.
John 1:18 says," No one has seen God at any time talking about the Father. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him." Now, some ancient manuscripts there read," Instead of the Only Begotten Son," has declared Him, it says," The Only Begotten God." And several of the early Christian writers quote it that way. And it's common in the early Christian writings to see the Father referred to as the unbegotten God and Jesus, the Son, as the begotten God, or Only Begotten God.
So the Father is in a unique position of being unbegotten. Not only that, in the Bible in both the Old and New Testament, when it speaks of God, it's nearly always referring to the Father. There are some references that refer to Jesus Christ by that label, which we will be talking about in a few minutes. But the vast majority of the time, when the Bible says God, it means the Father. It's time now we talk about what the early Christians believe concerning Jesus Christ.
In short, they believe that He is the only begotten Son of the Father. Because He is a true Son of the Father, Jesus has the same nature as does the Father. For example, I have two sons, and they both have the same nature that I do. I'm a human, and they are likewise human. In that sense, we are equal. They aren't horses or cats. They are human just like I am. If they didn't possess the same nature as I do, then they wouldn't be true children of mine.
So the early Christians believe that just as the Father is divine, so is Jesus. He possesses the same divine nature as his father, just like my sons possess the same human nature that I do. Let me just read to you a few representative quotations. Hippolytus, who wrote around the year 225 AD, said the Word talking about Jesus alone is from God Himself. For that reason also, He is divine, being of the nature of God. In contrast, the world was made from nothing. Therefore, it is not divine.
Origen, who wrote about the same time period, said," Whatever is a property of physical bodies cannot be attributed to either the Father or the Son. What belongs to the nature of deity is common to the Father and the Son." And again, he said," The Son is not different from the Father in nature." And every other Christian writer in the first few centuries all say the same thing. And of course, these writers were simply repeating what the New Testament already tells us.
For example, in Colossians 2:9, it says," For in Him, talking about Jesus, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form." It's from the New American Standard. That is why Jesus could say," If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." In Hebrews it says that Jesus is the express image of His Father. Now, it would be natural to assume that since Jesus is the Son of God, then He came into being at some point in time. After all, I existed before my sons did.
However, the early Christians uniformly understood Jesus' begetting in a different sense. After all, we're not dealing with the physical world when we speak of divine things. The early Christians believe that Jesus has always existed just as has the Father. At the same time, He is begotten from the Father. Well, how can that be, you may ask? If you're begotten from someone, well, then there has to be a difference in time there. Well, the early Christians used two different illustrations to explain this.
The first one, they said, is the Father and His Son are like the sun SUN in the sky, the heavenly body. Now, the body of the sun, S-U-N, they said, is like the Father. The light that comes from the sun, they said, is like Jesus. Now, suppose for a moment that our sun, SUN, has always existed. I mean, we know that it hasn't, but let's just suppose for a moment. If it has always existed, then the light that emanates from it has always existed as well.
Now, we know that the heavenly body, the sun, was created, but let's just suppose for a moment that it was self-existent, that it's always been here. In that sense, it would be like the Father. But the light that comes from the sun, even though it's of the same nature as the sun, it is not self-existent. I say that because if the body of the sun was extinguished, then the light would be extinguished as well. It doesn't exist on its own. Light is begotten from the sun. It has an origin.
Likewise, the Son of God has His origin in the Father. If the Father were to cease to exist, which is impossible, then the Son of God would become non-existent as well. He is not autotheos, that is, God of Himself. He depends on the Father for His life, for His existence. But because the Father is eternal, the Son is eternal as well. Actually, this analogy of the sun and the light that radiates from it is alluded to in the book of Hebrews.
Hebrews 1:3, where it refers to Jesus as being the brightness of the Father's glory. Other translations say," He is the radiance of the glory of God." So the Father is like the sun, SUN, and Jesus is like the radiance that comes from the sun, the light that emanates from it. Okay, a second illustration that many of the early Christians used to explain the relationship of the Father and the Son is that of a spring of water and the stream that flows from it.
Now, picture in your mind a naturally occurring spring of water that gushes out of the ground. That spring is like the father. To the ancient world, such a spring of water appeared to be self-existent. We know today that it's not, but we will suppose that for the purposes of the illustration. In the case of the father, he truly is self-existent. Okay, now picture in your mind a stream of water that flows from this spring. The stream is different from the spring itself.
It's like the two different persons, the father and the son. And yet, it's of the same nature as the spring. It's not a foreign substance. Whatever substance the spring is, the stream of water is also. They're both, as we know today, both H2O. The early Christians said," That's how the Son's relationship is to the Father. Just as the stream of water has the same substance or nature as the spring, so does the Son of God with His Father.
Likewise, just as the stream is begotten from the spring, so Jesus is begotten of the Father. In our illustration, the spring of water is self-existent, but not the stream of water that comes from it. That stream depends upon the spring for its existence. Now, imagine that that self-existent spring of water we're talking about that gushes from the ground, it is eternal. It has always been there. And that's the way the Father is. He's always been here.
Now, that being the case, what about the stream of water that flows from that spring? If the spring has always been here, then the stream of water from it has always been here as well. But that doesn't mean that the stream is unbegotten or self-existent. As we said, no, we know it doesn't. It depends upon the spring. If the spring dried up, the stream would dry up as well.
So I hope those illustrations help you understand how Jesus can have the same nature as the Father and actually be eternal with the Father, and yet He is begotten from the Father. He is a true Son because His existence comes from the Father. If the Son of God were to die, which is impossible, the Father would keep on living. It would not affect the existence of the Father.
Just like if that stream that flows from the spring of water, if you somehow diverted it so that it disappeared in a bed of sand or something, well, that would have no effect on the spring itself. It would keep gushing. But if the spring went dry, the stream would disappear. Likewise, if the Father were to go out of existence, which is totally impossible, well, then the Son of God would go out of existence as well, because His existence is dependent on the Father. Now again, this isn't me saying this.
I'm explaining to you how the early Christians understood it. And as I said, there's remarkable uniformity. They all use these same illustrations. They all say the same thing. There's certainly no doubt in my mind that their teaching came from the apostles. Because if one of the early Christian teachers made these things up himself, well then you would find a variety of different views, different illustrations, different teachings about Jesus and the Father. But no, you find a uniformity.
So hopefully you can now see how the Son of God can be begotten, yet be eternal at the same time. The interesting thing is that Eastern Christians still use those same two illustrations in explaining the relationship of the Father and the Son. But here in the West, that original teaching and understanding has been lost, and I'm going to explain towards the end how that happened. We've talked about how the Father and the Son have the same nature.
The Greek word that the early Christians use is ousia, often that word is translated into English as substance. And it's not necessarily a misuse of the English word substance. My dictionary gives the first definition of substance as the real or essential part or element of anything. Essence, reality, or basic matter. The reason I don't like to use the word substance is that it has a more common meaning than that first definition.
As it is with so many other words, the original definition is no longer the main use of that word. My dictionary also defines substance as the physical matter of which a thing consists. And that's the usual way the word substance is used today. And of course, the father and the son do not consist of physical matter. So I prefer to use the word nature or essence.
Nevertheless, the translators of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the collection of early Christian writings from writers prior to the Council of Nicaea, they usually translate ousia as substance. So if you come across a statement in the early Christian writings that says that the Father and the Son have the same substance, it means that they have the same essence or nature. For example, I'll read to you an excerpt from an early Christian writer named Theognosticus.
He said," The substance of the Son is not a substance devised extraneously, nor is it one introduced out of nothing. Rather it was born of the substance of the Father as the reflection of light or as the stream of water. For the reflection is not the same as the sun itself. Likewise, the stream is not the spring itself. But neither is it anything alien to it. The Son is an emanation from the substance of the Father. Now let's move to the subject of headship or authority.
While it's correct to say that the father and son are equal in nature, or that they have the same nature, it's not correct to say that they are equal in chain of command. There are far too many Scriptures that tell us otherwise. In fact, Jesus Himself made this clear. For example, he said," When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of myself.
But as my father taught me, I speak these things." Another place, he said," I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me gave me a command what I should say and what I should speak." Again, he said," To sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared by my Father." Paul tells us the same thing, 1 Corinthians 11:3." 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." And again, 1
Corinthians 15," When all things are made subject to Him," talking about Jesus, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him, meaning the Father, who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.
So the New Testament teaches, and the early Christians recognize that there is a hierarchy of order or authority between the Father and the Son. The Father is the head of Christ. The Father sent the Son to earth. He did not come of his own accord, although He did come willingly. I would now like to read to you a few representative quotes from the early church on that matter.
Clement of Alexandria wrote," Jesus is the Lord of all, and above all else, he serves the will of the good and almighty Father." Tertullian says," He himself proclaimed that he did not do his own will but that of the Father." And again he said," The Son of God has protection absolutely committed to Him. He beseeches it of the Father, from whom He receives all power in heaven and on earth." Hippolytus wrote," It is the Father who commands and the Son who obeys. The Father is above all.
The Son is through all." Origen: Just as Christ is our head, so God is His head. He became obedient to the Father, not only by the death of the cross, but also in the end of the world. For He embraces in Himself all whom He subjects to the Father, and who by Him come to salvation. Still talking about Jesus, He says," For He Himself is said to also be subject to the Father." Consequently, this is what the apostle says of Him.
And when all things will be subjected to Him, then will the Son also Himself be subject to Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all. He continues," Indeed, I do not know how the heretics, not understanding the meaning of the apostle in these words, considered the term" subjection" to be degrading when applied to the Son. To sum up what we've just talked about, Jesus is equal to His Father in nature, but He is subordinate to the Father as to headship.
You may be wondering who the people are that Origen refers to as the heretics who think it's degrading to the Son to say that He's in subjection to the Father. Well, he's talking about professing Christians who held to the belief known as modalism or Sabellianism. Basically, what modalism is, or Sabellianism, is the idea that Jesus and the Father are actually one and the same person, that sometimes God reveals Himself as the Father and other times as the Son.
So the designations of Father and Son are simply modes in which the one God reveals Himself. The Modalist got this idea because Jesus is sometimes spoken of as God in the New Testament, and because He said," I and the Father are one." Modalism was around in the second century, and it's still here today.
And even though only a few churches today have adopted modalism as their official belief, from the conversations I've had with hundreds of Christians of all varieties, it seems to me that most Western Christians, what they believe about Jesus and His Father, is actually modalism. For example, when I was a young man, I met with a Presbyterian pastor and asked him to explain to me the Trinity because it made no sense to me.
So he said," Well, now you're a father, aren't you?" And I said," Yes." And he said," But you're also a son because you have a father." I said," Yeah." He said," Well, see, that's the way it is with the Father and the Son." It's the same person, but he's a father in one sense, and he's a son in another.
Well, I remember thinking to myself," Well, I may be a father and I may be a son, but I'm not my own son, and I'm not my own father." Now, the Presbyterian Church would not teach modalism as its doctrine, but here's someone who had gone through seminary, and that's the view he held to. And as I said, from what I can see, this is what most professing Christians here in the West actually think.
But then if you press the average Christian very far, you find out that they really don't know what they believe, except they'll say they believe Jesus is God. If you ask them," In what sense then Jesus is the Son of God," they typically can't explain it. Or sometimes they will say He became the Son when He came down to earth as a man. And of course, that's not Orthodox at all. I realize, of course, that the nature and relationship of the Father and the Son are difficult for humans to grasp.
And that's why the early Christians before the Council of Nicaea never made it a test of orthodoxy to correctly understand the relationship of the Father and the Son, because it is easy for a person to come to wrong conclusions. But there are passages in Scripture that should make it obvious that the modalist explanation is not correct. I mean, Jesus said," The Father sent me." That's two different people, not one person. Jesus prayed to His Father. Are you gonna say He prayed to Himself?
The scriptures say that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, two different people. It says the Father is the head of Christ. I mean, there are so many passages, it should seem obvious that the Father and the Son are not one and the same person. So what did Jesus mean when He said," I and the Father are one?" Well, Jesus also said that a husband and wife become one flesh. Now he obviously didn't mean that the two humans become one human, or that the two persons become one person.
No, he means that they become one in purpose, and that under the biblical model, there is one head, one authority in the home. Well, that's the very thing the early Christians believed about the oneness of the Father and the Son. Here are just a few quotations that are very representative. Tertullian wrote," What He has been commanded by the Father, that also is what He speaks. And it is not His own will, but the Fathers that He has accomplished." He had known this fact most intimately, even from the beginning.
The Word, talking about Jesus, therefore is both always in the Father, as He says," I am in the Father," and is always with God according to what was written, and the Word was with God. He is never separated from the Father or different from the Father, since I and the Father are one. So what Tertullian is explaining, there is one will between the two, because the son always does his father's will. There is only one administration, one government.
Justin Martyr wrote," He who is said to have appeared to Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and who is called God, is distinct from the one who made all things. I mean He is numerically distinct. He is not distinct in will. For I assert that he has never at any time done anything that the one who made the world, above whom there is no other God, has not wished both to do and to engage himself with. So again, two different people, but one will between them, and that is the Father's will.
Now that I've explained to you what the early Christians believed about the Father and the Son, I think you can see that it fits all of the New Testament passages. There were no problem verses for the early Christians. The New Testament teaches the deity of Christ, that is, that He has the same divine nature as the Father, and yet it also teaches the headship of the Father. It clearly shows that they are two distinct persons, and it teaches that Jesus is begotten from His Father. His origin is in the Father.
This is what the early Christians believe going all the way back to the time of the apostle John. As we've mentioned, the error that the early Christians had to deal with was the misunderstanding that Jesus and His Father were one and the same person. So you may be wondering, well, what changed? Why don't the churches today still teach this? Let me tell you what happened. It's the same scenario that has happened time after time throughout church history.
In each century, it's a different doctrine that's in dispute, but the result is invariably the same. Someone swings too far in one direction, and in response, the church swings too far in the opposite direction. As I've mentioned, the main error concerning Jesus that the early Christians had to contend with was modalism. Now, modalism had never become a huge controversy for several reasons. One, as I said earlier, the emphasis of the early Christians was on living the Christian life, not on theology.
Second, modalism never had that large of a following. And third, the big heresy that the early Christians had to contend with was Gnosticism, which taught that the God of the Old Testament was a different God than the Father of Jesus, and denied that the Son of God had actually become human. And although modalism never had a large following, it never completely disappeared either. Now, in the early 300s, there was an elder in one of the congregations in Alexandria, Egypt, who was a zealous opponent of modalism.
His name was Arius. But in arguing against the Modalists, Arius made the typical mistake of overreacting to their errors. If you remember my earlier illustration of the true doctrine being green, and you have blue on one side and yellow on the other, we might liken the modalist to being in the blue paint. And in response to them, Arius moved all the way over to the yellow paint.
Arius thought he was just upholding the historic teaching of the church, but he fell into a very common error about the Father and the Son. And it's the same error I still see abounding today, and that is, he confused nature and order. As we've talked about, the original Christian teaching was that Jesus is equal in nature to the Father. He has the same divine nature, but that He is subordinate as to order or headship.
Well, in his arguments against the Modalists, Arius began to confound the passages in the New Testament about Jesus. He didn't see the distinction between the verses that deal with the Son's nature and the verses that deal with the Son's position of authority under the Father. So Arius began teaching that Jesus was subordinate in nature to the Father. He said that the Son of God was created out of nothing, just like the angels and the material universe.
Now, in his mind, he still completely believed in the divinity of Christ, but he also said that Jesus was not eternal, that He came into existence at some point before the beginning of time. Now, on those two points, Arius was not teaching the historic faith, but it was an effective counterargument to the modalists. Arius also accused the bishop or overseer in Alexandria of being a modalist. The bishop's name was Alexander.
Well, Arius and Alexander got into a violent argument, which soon spilled over into all of the congregations in Alexandria. Now, Alexandria was the second largest city in the Roman Empire, so this was not some small dispute that nobody knew about. In fact, not only was Alexandria the second largest city, it had become somewhat the theological center of Christianity in the fourth century. So before long, this local argument spread throughout the entire body of Christians throughout the world.
Well, as you probably know, the Roman Emperor Constantine, who was trying to prosper the church, convened a council of bishops from all over the world. He invited them to meet at his summer residence in Nicaea to settle this argument before it tore the entire body of Christians apart. Well, after debating for several weeks, the bishops finally decided to modify the original statement of belief that all congregations had used, the brief one I read to you earlier tonight. It's often known as the Apostles' Creed.
The new creed, which is known today as the Nicene Creed, was actually basically the Apostles' Creed with expanded language about the divinity of Jesus. Constantine himself suggested some of the wording. Well, here is how the Nicene Creed starts off. It says," I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God." Okay, that's straight out of the Apostles' Creed.
That's what Christians had always said. Now here's the language that he added. It's fairly brief. It says this about Jesus: Begotten of His Father before all worlds. God from God, light from light, very God from very God. Begotten, not made. Being of the same substance as the Father. By whom all things were made. And that's it. And then the rest of it is just, again, the Apostles' Creed. So actually, the Nicene Creed does not say anything different from what the early Christians had always believed.
As we've seen, they believed that Jesus was begotten before all worlds. In fact, they believed that Jesus is eternal, that He's begotten in a fashion the way a stream of water is begotten from a fountain. Now the passage" God from God" and" Very God from Very God" is easy to misunderstand in English. What it is saying is that Jesus has the same divine nature as the Father. It's like the illustration I used of my two sons. They are human from human.
Now, I think a better English translation of the Nicene Creed would be that Jesus is deity from deity or true deity from true deity. Because to an untrained ear, it sounds like it's saying that He is the Father from the Father, because the word" God" is usually used in the New Testament to refer to the Father. Now, of course, the other phrase" light from light" that comes straight from the analogy the early Christians used about Jesus being the light that comes from the sun.
Now the phrase" being of the same substance as the Father" would probably be better translated being of the same nature as the Father, or being of the same essence as the Father. And that's, again, what the early Christians had been saying from day one. So the Nicene Creed is actually in harmony with the historic Christian faith, at least when it's read with the same meaning that the men at that council intended. Now, it's often misread today.
Most Christians today who say they believe the Nicene Creed don't believe it. And some Christians who say they don't believe it actually do. The Nicene Creed is definitely not teaching modalism, and that's what most Western Christians actually believe. When I say that the Nicene Creed is consistent with the historic teaching of Christianity about the Father and the Son, it doesn't mean that I approve of the Nicene Council itself.
For one thing, Christians had no business meeting in a council with a Roman Emperor, who was not even a baptized Christian. To be sure, the Nicene Council did not establish a state church, but it was a key step that eventually led to that very thing. Second, the spirit of the council was not one of Christian love. It was a hateful, contentious spirit. Third, there had been theological errors among Christians before, such as modalism, but no one ever thought of changing the basic statement of belief because of them.
The statement of faith had stayed the same for over 200 years. The errors of Arius could be corrected without changing the creed. But back to our story. Although the decision of the Nicene Council seemed to have settled things, in the end, it turned out it didn't. When the bishops returned to their home congregations, many of them found that their congregations were quite upset, that the council had changed the historic creed. So there was a conservative backlash to the Nicene Council and the Nicene Creed.
Furthermore, modalism had always been the primary error about the father and the son that Christian leaders had been dealing with. Yet the Nicene Creed doesn't contain any language to specifically exclude or condemn Modalism. Now, mixed in with these conservatives who didn't like the Nicene Creed, were others who held to the same or similar views of Arius. So it appeared that perhaps the Nicene Creed would be overturned.
In fact, local councils were held that drew up statements of belief or creeds that essentially reiterated what Christians had always believed about the Father and the Son. But then a charismatic leader named Athanasius entered the scene. Alexander, the bishop of the Christians in Alexandria, who had been the main opponent of Arius, he died shortly after the Nicene Council, and Athanasius had taken his place.
As I've mentioned, the Bishop of Alexandria held a position of theological importance in the early 4th century that rivaled that of the Bishop of Rome. In fact, in reality, it exceeded that of the Bishop of Rome. Well, Athanasius made it his life's mission to make sure that the Nicene Creed remained unchanged as a permanent fixture of the church. He also made it his personal mission to totally stamp out Arianism or even anything that might be interpreted as leaning towards Arianism.
But in carrying out this mission, Athanasius made the same blunder as had Arius. As I've mentioned, Arius confused nature and headship. He said," If Jesus is subordinate to the Father in authority, then He must also have a subordinate nature." And Athanasius fell into this very same pit. The only difference is that he swung to the opposite direction of Arius. He went over to the blue side, Arius was on the yellow side. What Christianity originally taught was the green.
Athanasius said that since Jesus is equal in nature to the Father, then He can't be subordinate to the Father in authority. But what about all of the scriptures in which Jesus explicitly says He does everything under His Father's authority? Well, Athanasius came up with a novel argument that no Christian had ever taught before. He said that all of those passages only apply to Jesus' time on earth as a man.
He said that Jesus had voluntarily decided to submit himself to his father's authority and come to earth on our behalf. He said there is no headship by nature between the Father and the Son. Even now that Jesus is back in heaven, it's still only a voluntary thing on Jesus' part. So Athanasius claimed that when Jesus said the Father is greater than I, he was only referring to the fact that at that moment in time, Jesus was in a human body and his father wasn't. But this was not the historic faith.
Ironically, Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, who had been the main opponent of Arius, both before and at the Nicene Council, he could explain these very same words of Jesus right before the council was convened. And what he said was this:" In short, whatever word we use to describe the Son is not equivalent to unbegotten. Therefore, to the unbegotten father indeed, we should preserve his proper dignity in confessing that no one is the cause of his being.
However, to the son must be also given his fitting honor in assigned to him an origin from the Father without beginning and assigning worship to Him. We by no means reject His divinity, but we ascribe to Him a likeness that exactly answers in every respect to the image and example of the Father. Still, we must say that to the Father alone belongs to the property of being unbegotten.
For the Savior Himself said," My Father is greater than I." And that's what Christians had always understood, that Jesus was pointing out that He was begotten from His Father. His life was in the Father. And that was one reason why the Father was greater than him, and the other was his father's headship over him. So Athanasius introduced new theology to Christianity in his effort to counter the argument of the Arians.
When the Arians claimed that Jesus had a subordinate nature to the Father, because He was subordinate in authority, Athanasius would counter them by denying that Jesus was subordinate in authority. And because this proved to be an effective tactic, Athanasius became the chief defender of the Nicene Creed. But he himself was changing the historic faith. He was introducing error into the body of Christ. He was denying the obvious statements of Scripture.
But what I particularly dislike about Athanasius were the tactics that he used. He drew a figurative line in the sand saying," Either you accept the Nicene Creed just as it is without any alteration, or else you're really an Arian." Now, in the middle of the 4th century, labeling a Christian leader as an Arian was like today labeling a government official as a racist. And so Athanasius tactics were extremely effective. The vast majority of those who opposed the Nicene Creed were not Arians.
They were conservatives who wanted to go back to what Christianity had always said, and to the creed that had stood for over 200 years. But the conservatives really had no champion equivalent to Athanasius to argue their side for them. As a result, the original teaching of the body of Christ about Jesus and His Father were lost. And as is always true in history, the victors get to write the history books.
So Athanasius, who eventually won out, was able to perpetuate the myth that the entire church had gone Arian, and he and he alone stood against the whole world and saved the historic faith. And that's often how the story is still written in history books to this day. But all anyone has to do is to read what Christians taught about the Father and the Son before the time of Athanasius, and then compare it to what Athanasius said. And when you do this, it's rather obvious that he changed the faith.
He didn't preserve it. Now, if all of that wasn't bad enough, in the West, the faith got changed even further. If Arius and Athanasius were conceited in imagining that they better understood Christianity than anyone before them, neither one of them could hold a candle in this regard to Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, who became the primary theologian of the West. He threw out an enormous part of the historic faith, believing that he and he alone better understood the New Testament than all those who preceded him.
He's the one who first taught that war can be holy and that it's okay to persecute heretics. He was the first one to teach predestination. And when he got through rewriting Christian doctrine about Jesus and his father, well, Jesus and his father essentially became two brothers, not father and son. Augustine's errors about the father and the son were carried on after his death.
In fact, after he had died, some anonymous person in the West drew up a document that basically summarizes what Augustine taught about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whoever this person was, he called his spurious document the Athanasian Creed. But what it teaches is not what Athanasius taught, and it's certainly not what the Nicene Creed says.
In case you're not familiar with the Athanasian creed, it's the creed that says in part," The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but there are not three gods, there is only one God," end quote. Crystal clear, isn't it? No wonder Western Christians are so confused about who the Father and the Son are. Anyway, this spurious creed was forged at a time when the Western Roman Empire was being overrun by barbarians. Knowledge of Greek was disappearing, along with learning in general.
As a result, this fraudulent document was accepted in the West as being the authentic teaching of Athanasius, and was accepted as a creed by the Roman Catholic Church, and later by the Reformers. Now the Eastern Christians have never accepted it, and they recognize it as a fraud. Unfortunately, probably most Western Christians think that the Athanasian creed is one and the same as the Nicene Creed, which it definitely is not.
Despite the circumstances and shortcomings of the Nicene Creed, it does accurately represent the historic teaching of Christians about Jesus and His Father. The Athanasian Creed does not. In conclusion, I realize that there are a number of issues and questions that time hasn't permitted me to address tonight, but I do hope that you now at least have a better understanding of what Christians originally believed about the Father and the Son.
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