Posted on 07/22/2010 9:04:57 PM PDT by Salvation
He is both outside it and in it.
The Word became the Son in time, when He became incarnate, God in the flesh.(1Tim.3:16)
In Jn.1:14, it states that the Son was begotten when He became flesh.
So, if the 'Father' gave 'birth' to the Son, that would make the Son less of a God than the Father, since the Son, would have had a beginning, while the Father didn't.
Why should they change that, Christ did descend into Hell.
That is itself a heresy.
Scripture is the final authority, not any church, or creed or tradition.
Who corrected them-Christ did.
And He always used the words of scripture to do so and rebuked them for not knowing or obeying the written word of God.
It appears that we will have to agree to disagree on this. All the tenets of the Nicene Creed are there because the Catholic Church defined it. Of course, it was based on Scripture, but they were counteracting heretics at that time and it all needed to be defined.
Is that so difficult to understand? Or am I being dense here?
Did you read the definition I posted above? Did you delve into any of those links I provided?
Webster 1828
HER’’ESY, n. [Gr. to take, to hold; L. haeresis.]
1. A fundamental error in religion, or an error of opinion respecting some fundamental doctrine of religion....
The Scriptures being the standard of faith, any opinion that is repugnant to its doctrines, is heresy;
If the Father gave birth to the Son in eternity, that would make the Son have a beginning and thus, He would not the eternal 'I AM'.
The Creed places the Son as coming from the Father in eternity, when in fact, they always co-existed together as God.
The only difference between the Arians and those who wrote the Creed is that the Creed writers moved the question into eternity, hoping that would appease the Arians.
Do you have baptism? Who do baptise in the name of?
What does that have to do with the 'eternal sonship' issue?
Do you understand that these Creed writers were saying that one member of the Trinity CAME from another (begotten)?
I found this
"God's perspective on time, revisited
God does not view time the same way we do. Instead, He is above time, and is present at every point in time simultaneously. This was discussed at length in Chapter 1, a discussion which will not be repeated here. However, an application of this principle must here be made to the problem of God's Son being begotten at a fixed time in human history.
Jesus was begotten the Son of God for us on a date which the best scholarship seems to indicate (although the Bible doesn't say) was in approximately 4 BC.
Before that, He had not yet been sent into the world to reveal the Father, to bring deliverance, to rule, or to do any of the other things on our behalf for which He was begotten into our world to do. That is, there is clearly a time before which, as we see time, Jesus was not the begotten Son of God. However, even before Jesus was begotten into our world, into our time, even from the beginning of time God was already present with Mary at the time of Jesus' begetting, and was already present on the day of his resurrection. God had already begotten his Son from the beginning of time, he simply had not been manifested to us, limited as we are by time. The problem of the "preincarnate Christ" exists only for us, not for God; it is a result of our limited frame of reference. Though the incarnation happened at a point in time, Jesus has always been the only begotten of the Father."
http://christian-oneness.org/about-the-Lord/chapter9.html
fortheDeclaration:
Are you a “Oneness” Protestant? as you seem to implicitly rejecting the distinction of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which in fact, was a late 2nd/early 3rd century heresy called “Modalism”, also referred to as “Sabellianism.”
Christ is eternally of the Father in his Divine Nature, thus from the same “substance” as the Father [In Greek, homousious, is the term used in the Original Greek, which in Latin was translated consubstantial with the Father]
So Christ, in his Divine Nature was always and there was never a time when he was not, which is what Arius was stating “There was a time when the Father was not a Father, He [The Father] was once alone”, was his argument. THis meant that Christ came into being at a point of time, according to Arianism.
By stating that Christ eternally was begotten of the Father, God from God, begotten, not made, the Nicene Creed refuted Arius. At the Incarnation, human nature was assumed by Christ, his nature was not made. The Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Father [Western version of the Creed stated and the Son], who in relationship is the source of the Trinity, yet because of the union of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God is One Divine Substance.
Traditional (from the Ordo Missae) 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. Born of the Father before all ages. God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God. Begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father. By Whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven. And He became flesh by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary: and was made man. He was also crucified for us, suffered under Pontius Pilate, and was buried. And on the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. And of His kingdom there will be no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceeds from the Father and the Son. Who together with the Father and Son is adored and glorified; and Who spoke through the Prophets. And one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. And I await the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the world to come. Amen.
A true Trinitarian believes that all three members co-existed together as equals.
None were 'begotten'in eternity.
Christ (as we now know him)in eternity, was the Word, not the Son.
The Sonship of Christ is a function of the Plan, which has a hierarchal structure in the Trinity.
The Word agreed to become the Son in time as part of that Plan.
'Begotten' means to 'born' from the Father, as the article admits, which means the Word would be less then the Father.
The Nicene Creed simply pushes Arianism back into eternity, hoping no one would notice, and then uses a lot of rhetoric to cover up what it is really teaching, that one member of the Trinity preceded another, when it states clearly that in the beginning that the Word was with God and the Word was God.
No one was begotten in eternity.
See what the Creed is saying!
The Word always existed.
There was no begotten in eternity.
The 'Father' didn't precede the other members of the Trinity in eternity, as the Creed states.
That is neo-Platonic nonsense.
The Father is the "origin" or "source" of the Trinity. As such, God the Father is often called "God Unbegotten" in early Christian thought.
The begetting occured in time, when the Word became flesh, the only-begotten Son of God.
That part is wrong, the begetting didn't occur in eternity.
Begotten has the meaning of born, generated, or produced. God the Son is born out of the essence of God the Father. Just as a child shares the same humanness as his or her parents, the Son shares the essential nature of God with the Father. Since God is eternal, the Son, being begotten of God, is also eternal. The Son is often called the Only-Begotten God in early Christian literature, including in John 1:18 in many manuscripts.
This occured in time, not eternity.
“Do you understand that these Creed writers were saying that one member of the Trinity CAME from another (begotten)?”
I’ll refer you to this:
The Eternal Sonship of Christ
Some Evangelicals, such as John MacArthur, J. Oliver Buswell, and the late Walter Martin, have been abandoning the Trinitarian faith as defined by the First Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325). Their abandonment of orthodox Trinitarianism consists in denying the eternal Sonship of Christ, the doctrine that the second person of the Trinity was the Son of God from all eternity. Instead, they claim that the second person of the Trinity only became the Son of God at his incarnation. Apart from the incarnation he was still God, but not the Son, just the second Person.
This teaching destroys the internal relationships within the Trinity, because if the Son was not eternally begotten by the Father then neither did the Spirit eternally proceed from the Father through the Son. It also destroys the Fatherhood of the first person, since without a Son there is no Father. Thus the fundamental familial relations among the persons of the Godhead are destroyed and replaced by mere social relationships, a bare existence of three persons in the Godhead. Prior to the incarnation, there is no longer the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but simply Number One, Number Two, and Number Three—the numbers themselves being an arbitrary designation.
The Church Fathers who wrote the creeds had a different view. They recognized that the Bible depicts the Son as having his identity as the Son before his incarnation. In 1 John 4:9 we read, that “the love of God was made manifest among us [in] that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” Thus, the second person of the Trinity was already the Son when he was sent into the world.
The same truth is taught under a different analogy in John 1:1,14 where we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Here the Word (i.e., the second person of the Trinity) is pictured as having his identity as the Word from all eternity. Thus, from all eternity the Word of God proceeded from God, just as speech proceeds from a speaker; similarly,
a Son proceeds from his Father. Under both analogies, whether as the Son of God or the Word of God, the second person of the Trinity is depicted as eternally proceeding from the first person of the Trinity.
Of special interest among the following passages are those in which the early Christians wrote of God as Father prior to the incarnation. Such passages imply the role of the second person as Son before the incarnation, since as we have noted, without a Son there is no Father.
http://www.catholic.com/library/Eternal_Sonship_of_Christ.asp
...the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.--Romans 1:4Note that his being the son of God in the above passage is a nature or relationship that is distinct from his human birth. His human birth resulted in his being a son of David, not the son of God. His resurrection from the dead declared him as the Son of God.
"For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering."He was God's son who was sent; he didn't become a son by being born as a human.
"But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law..." Galatians 4:4Again, the sonship and the sending is prior to the birth as a human. Also this same distinction is found in the descriptions Jesus uses of himself in the Gospels as the Son of Man versus the Son of God.
"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him...--I John 4:9"Again the sonship and the sending was prior to and instrumental to his appearance in the world as a human being.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.--John 3:16&17Again the sonship is prior to the giving and the sending into the world.
"Yes, Lord," she told him, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world."--John 11:27The belief was that Christ was the son of God prior to coming into the world not because of coming into the world. This is seen in what Jesus said to his disciples shortly before being arrested and betrayed:
"I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father."--John 16:28Note that he didn't say, "I came from God and, upon entering the world, became his Son and he became a Father; now I am leaving the world where I became his Son and going back to him who formerly was not the Father but, by my act of being born through the incarnation, became the Father.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.