Trinity And Controversy Series

But don’t think the problem’s sorted. Arius continues his agitation and his propaganda and his intrigue. And right now the wheels are falling off the cart. There were Arians and semi-Arians and creeds and rumours and innuendos. Some people saying the Son is the same as the Father (homoousious), others are saying he is simply like the Father (homoiousios). And the battle raged across the church.

This brings us back to Athanasius. ‘Who ever thought, he exclaimed, ‘that having abolished the worship of creatures we are to return to it again’. Elsewhere he writes, ‘If our Saviour is neither God nor the Word nor the Son then let the Arians no longer be ashamed to think and talk as pagans and Jews do’ (Macleod, Shared Life, 39–40).

So how did Athanasius respond to the pronounced that Jesus was created by God? What do you say when the deity of Christ is challenged?

Macleod sums up Athanasius well. ‘The very heart of Christianity, as [Athanasius] saw it, was that Christ be worshipped, and the church’s concept of him must agree with her practice. Arianism would be idolatry; the worship of a creature […] A Christ who is less than divine could never be a real Saviour. If he himself were not truly the Son of God, how could we become sons of God through him?’ (Macleod, Shared Life, 39–40).

At the cross a great exchange took place: Christ took upon himself our sins and we received his righteousness. Athanasius also noticed that a great exchange also took place in the Incarnation. In becoming man, Christ took upon himself what it means to be human. He did this to be our representative. He did this in order to be the head of a new humanity. In exchange, Jesus gave humanity the grace of being able to partake in the divine nature. As Athanasius himself said, ‘He was made man that we might be made God’ (Letham, 130). Have you ever considered that if there were no exchange at the Incarnation, there could be no exchange at the cross? Athanasius urges us to read our Bibles well.

We learn the lot about the Trinity by considering men like Irenaeus and Athanasius who laboured to clarify the Bible during turbulent times. We can admire their strength and commitment to defending the truth. But the temptation is to leave these men behind. To admire and to move on. To allow cobwebs to collect on our spiritual heritage. But the Teacher in Ecclesiastes says, ‘Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before’ (Ecc 3:15). There is nothing new under the sun, the things of old carry on in a new way.

The bell rings and its time for round three.

I’ve had Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on my door a few times. These well meaning folk are modern day Arians. What they believe appears regularly in their magazine, ‘The Watch Tower’. Here it is declared that ‘Jehovah is the only true God and is the maker of heaven and earth and the Giver of life to his creatures’. We may well assent to this belief. After all, God is the ‘only true God’. And is he not the ‘maker of heaven and earth’? Is he not the ‘Giver of life to his creatures’?