The CreedsThe CreedsGuardians Against HeresyGuardians Against Heresy

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What language was the New Testament written in?

Why?

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Like all languages, it is very tightly bound to the culture of

the people who speak it…

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“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God…

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been

made.” – John 1:1,3

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λόγος“form”, “reason”, “symbol”, etc.

It’s the root we get “logic” from

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Plato

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Physical instances of things (e.g., chairs) are but

shadows of the true reality (“chair-ness”)

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The “essence” is perfect and eternal

good

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Physical things are imperfect, die and decay

evil

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LogosLogos FleshFlesh??

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“The Logos became flesh and made his dwelling

among us.” – John 1:14

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But wouldn’t that mean that the perfect became

imperfect? The “good” became “evil”?

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What does God have to say about that idea?

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GnosticsGnostics

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The Gnostics taught a

particular mixture of Platonist thought and Christianity

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They identified God closely with “The Logos” and believed

that you are saved because God grants a mystical union

with you, and you are therefore enlightened and are brought

closer to God

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Isn’t that what Orthodox Christianity teaches?

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“Gnostic” comes from the same word as our word

“knowledge,” and basically means “Those in the know”

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Today this appears in the form of Charismatics,

Pentecostals and anabaptists

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The “new gospels” that occasionally pop up are generally Gnostic texts

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One recent example in popular culture referencing them is

“The Da Vinci Code”

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The Epistles of John are largely attempts to counter the enormous influence of

Gnosticism

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ApostleApostle’’s s CreedCreed

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“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven

and Earth,”

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The Gnostics held that the physical universe is evil and that therefore God, who is

Good, did not make it

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“And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy

Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary,”

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The Gnostics denied that God had taken human

nature or a human body

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But no “real” Christians would need to be told this

Right?

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Much of the stigma surrounding all things “carnal” is based in

remnants of this heresy

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Sex, for example, is often seen as a “necessary evil,” and that’s the primary reason why Roman Catholicism insists

on the perpetual virginity of Mary, since it teaches that she was untouched by sin

See, for example, sections499-500 in theCatholic Catechism

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“Suffered under Pontius Pilate,”

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While the Bible contains a lot of doctrine, it is above all True. True in the spiritual sense

AND in the historical “flesh and blood” sense

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“Was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into

Hell.”

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Here the Creed hammers home the point that he was really dead

The reference to the descent into Hell here makes it clear that the death of Jesus was not just an illusion, a swoon or a coma, but

death in every sense of the word…

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“I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the

communion of saints,”

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The Gnostics believed that the most important Christian

doctrines were reserved for a select few:

those “in the know” who have had a special mystical

experience

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Hence the term “catholic,” or universal, which distinguished

them from the Gnostics

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“the forgiveness of sins,”

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The Gnostics considered that

what men needed was not

forgiveness, but enlightenment

Ignorance, not sin, was the problem

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“the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. AMEN”

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The chief goal of the Gnostics was to

become free forever from the taint of matter and the

shackles of the body, and to return to the heavenly realm as

Pure Spirit

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They totally rejected any idea of the resurrection of the body

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When people think that we’re meant to live as spirits (angels?) forever in the presence of God, they’ve only

got it half right…

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We are meant to live in physical bodies

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As it says in Revelation 21, God will create a “new heaven and new earth” for us to live in

The physical world will be remade for us to inhabit (albeit with a great many changes)

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Writing The Writing The Apostle’s CreedApostle’s Creed

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Legend has it that each of the twelve “verses” was

done by Inspiration by each of the 12 Apostles

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While there were references to it by the second century, the first known writing in its

current form was from around 710 AD

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Because it was focused primarily on a particular heresy and very general statement of

faith, it left a lot of room for many other heresies

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Arius of Arius of AlexandrAlexandr

iaia

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When Arius of Alexandria petitioned Constantine for

support in 327 AD, it became clear that a more

formal, precise statement of what “Christian” means was

needed

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The Arian heresy is often described as the denial of

the deity of Christ

Like everything with that big an impact, it’s not nearly

that simple

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According to the Arians, Christ is “the first and greatest creation of Jehovah God and His active

agent in creating all things.”

“the Son is a mighty god but not Jehovah God.”

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What modern heresy is a direct descendant of the

Arian heresy?

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Jehovah’s Witnesses, who point to Arius as one of

their Church Fathers

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Nicene Nicene CreedCreed

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“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that

is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus

Christ, the only Son of God,”

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Here and elsewhere (such as John 1:14) the Greek has “monogenetos

huios”

An English translation may read either “only Son” or “only begotten

Son”

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“eternally begotten of the Father,”

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Arius was fond of saying, “The Logos is not eternal.

God begat him, and before he was begotten, he did not

exist.”

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The Athanasians (Bishop Athanasius was the leader

of those that battled the Arians) replied that the

begetting of the Logos was not an event in time, but an

eternal relationship

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“God from God, Light from Light,”

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A favorite analogy of the Athanasians was the following:

Light is continuously streaming forth from the sun

The rays of light are derived from the sun, and not vice versa

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The analogy is further appropriate because we can know the sun only through the rays of light that it emits

To see the sunlight is to see the sun

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As Jesus says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John

14:9)

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“true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one

being with the Father.”

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This the Arians simply could not interpret as meaning what they

believed

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“Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered

death and was buried.”

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Only pausing here to note that the older translation of the last phrase here was simply, “He suffered and was buried.”

Apparently by the time of Nicaea, it was no longer necessary to emphasize that Christ had really died at Calvary, as it had been

spelled out in the Apostles’ Creed

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“On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he

ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again

in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the

giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son].”

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The words shown in brackets, “and from the Son,” are a

Western addition to the Creed

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Without going into too much detail, the Eastern Church did not agree with this choice of wording and the fact that the West “slipped it in” drove further the

wedge between East and West

(Technically, the East had a legitimate complaint against how the Western Church handled the situation, though they were wrong in their understanding of the doctrine)

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“With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.

He has spoken through the Prophets.”

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This line was directed against the view that the Holy Spirit

did not exist, or was not active, before Pentecost

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“We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We

acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come. AMEN”

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The “one baptism” part will become important later

when St. Augustine battled the Donatists...

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Briefly, the Donatists believed that if you

received an “illegitimate baptism” then it didn’t count

and you needed to be baptized again

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Where do you hear this heresy today? What is the

Biblical answer?

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Left UnsaidLeft Unsaid

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As with anything of this type, it should be noted the kinds of

things that were left out of Creed, because in doing so the framers

were essentially saying that disagreements about such things

were not considered heretical

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For example, many of the “practical” teachings of Jesus

are missing entirely, especially that which has to do with the

Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of This World

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Constantine, for one, would never have allowed a Creed that spoke

against worldly ambitions

That omission would be used when the Church started to gain

tremendous worldly power