Standing Up for the Truth
Should people care about defending the truth? Should we not just accept our differences and embrace our diversity? Actually, I am all for respecting differences and embracing diversity, inside and outside the Church. There are many grey areas that we must humbly listen to others with a teachable mind and heart. But there are other areas where we need to hold firm, especially within the Church.
If there is one area that is non-negotiable, it is the nature of Jesus. The Bible presents Jesus as fully God and fully human (See Philippians 2:5-11 and Colossians 1:15-17). The reason that much of the Church holds to this biblical position today is because brave Christians stood up for the truth throughout history when the nature of Jesus was under attack.
One of the most dangerous heresies of the early Church was that of Arianism. The Arians taught that Jesus was not God incarnate but was a created being (modern Jehovah’s Witness theology has some things in common with Arianism). We would like to think that this was an isolated theological error, but in the eastern Roman Empire, over half of the bishops embraced Arianism. The Church responded by calling the council of Nicaea (325 AD) which produced the Nicene Creed. The original form of the Nicene Creed was:
We believe in one God the Father All-sovereign, maker of all things. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made, things in heaven and things on the earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, and became man, suffered, and rose on the third day, ascended into the heavens, and is coming to judge living and dead. And in the Holy Spirit. And those that say ‘There was when he was not,’ and, ‘Before he was begotten he was not,’ and that, ‘He came into being from what-is-not,’ or those that allege, that the son of God is ‘Of another substance or essence’ or ‘created,’ or ‘changeable’ or ‘alterable,’ these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.
However, having a creed did not put an end to the debate and at times the controversy erupted into open war. In the midst of that struggle was a man named Athanasius. Kenneth Scott Latourette describes Athanasius in this way: “A man of stalwart character and deep religious faith and insight, his intrepid and unwavering support contributed notably to the eventual triumph of the form of the faith which is associated with Nicaea.” (A History of Christianity Vol. 1, p. 158)
I recently heard a wonderful lecture on Athanasius by John Piper that is most definitely worth listening to. You can download it or you can listen to it on-line. It is an hour and twenty minutes but it would be well worth your time. You can find the lecture here.
The biblical faith that we enjoy today is, to an extent, due to the sacrifices that Athanasius was willing to make. We need more people like Athanasius who are willing to stand up for the truth.
