25 - Clerical Celibacy and Mariolatry

All right, lesson number 25. Next one will be halfway through the number,

I think it was 52, the first time we did Church History, and we are not on the same track, no, it's going to take a while, but that's okay.

Lesson number 25, we were looking at the rise of monasticism.

Again, as I said last time, though last time seems like a long time ago, and it was a long time ago now that I think about it, been a lot of places, done a lot of things since then, but we were looking at the subject of the rise of monasticism.

And as I said then, this is a particular subject that is very difficult for people from my background to even begin to even try to expend a little bit of energy to begin to understand, because there's just a natural, almost a natural revulsion, to be honest with you, if you were raised in sort of an independent fundamentalist

Baptist background, it's just, you know, how can I, why should

I waste my time learning anything about monasteries or monks or anything like this?

And the fact of the matter is, if you don't, you're not going to understand Luther. You're not going to understand the struggles that he had in coming to understand what justification was.

You're not going to understand what a huge opening of the mind it was when he could look at Erasmus' Diglot, the, what was called the

Novum Instrumentum, the Latin, Greek, facing each other on the page, and he's looking at the

Latin, and it's the very familiar, Poenitentium agitate, due penance, but then he looks across the page at the

Greek, which he is, it's now come to be understood, now that anachronism is starting to fade in the thinking of people after the

Renaissance, and things just always haven't been the same, there have been changes, so on and so forth.

He looks at the original language, and sees that it's not due penance, it's repent, and as he looks at the lexical sources, few as they might be, that define repentance, it's not the same as penance, it's not the same as sleeping on the floor in Germany during the winter without a blanket on a stone floor, that's not going to be comfortable, that's not what repentance is, and so it's hard for us

I think to, we end up I think with a warped view of what happens in the

Reformation and what happens in the rest of church history, if we don't have some understanding of the development of monasticism, we can't talk about the transmission of biblical texts, a large portion of them are done starting around this time period in monasteries, certainly during the medieval period, this is the primary focus of manuscript productions in the monasteries, things like that, so have to put out the effort and recognize the central role that this played in at least what's called the external church, and of course it's important when you try to think through issues regarding to what was true

Christianity even when the external church begins to adopt almost universally traditions that we would recognize as definitely sub -biblical, and where you draw the line in what becomes absolutely anti -biblical and by definition a false gospel, those would be things that again to try to get to that point, we need to have a lot of the background information or we're not going to be able to make proper decisions.

By the middle of the second century, so pretty quickly, the interaction of the church with surrounding cultures of the day resulted in a view that indicated that celibacy was a road to a more spiritual life, celibacy equaled spiritual power, and as I mentioned last time this really was influenced, there were influences of Gnosticism in this, it is funny that when you're opposing something, the human tendency is to try to find a middle ground, well sometimes that middle ground needs to be found, sometimes it results, if you don't have a solid basis to stand on, it results in your moving onto ground you shouldn't have, celibacy is not spiritual power, it

I suppose could be in some circumstances, but that doesn't make it a general rule.

I mentioned to you last time that quickly problems arose, and I mentioned to you that wonderful council, one of those wonderful councils about which songs have even been written today, the council of Elvira in 306, see no one's awake this early in the morning, you're probably going what songs were written about the council of Elvira, in 306 a bunch of people are looking at me going what is he talking about, if you don't know don't worry about it, it's okay, and then the council of Nicaea had to address this as well.

By the end of the fourth century priestly celibacy began to be enforced in some but not all areas, the eastern churches never adopted the requirement, and while the west did the working relationship between priests and women for the next thousand years of the reformation beyond involved sexual activity, so obviously all the way through the reformation it was well known that the pope had many concubines, priests would have concubines, it was really a mockery of, well even today by the way, there's a lot of pressure upon the

Roman hierarchy today to have women priests, and it's important to recognize that Rome does not identify an all male priesthood as a dogma, it is a discipline, and what's the difference, well a dogma is something you have to believe de fide to be a

Roman Catholic, it's not even a doctrine, it's a discipline based upon other concepts and other ideas, and as such, it could change,

I would expect that that would cause a tremendous drift, but there's a, you know, the current pope, who knows, he certainly has shown willingness to do other things, but it's not considered a dogma, it's considered a discipline, something that is reformable

I suppose in some ways. I mentioned to you, you know, that in the issues of Jerome and Paula, I'm just sort of getting us back up to speed here, it was a sad thing to see the diminishment of women, but that led to, ironically then, the exaltation of Mary as the ideal woman.

Now, tomorrow in fact, I'm going to try to have a guest on the program on the dividing line, so I may be discussing a, there were two debates on Roman Catholicism that took place in a fairly short period of time, my debate with Trent Horn on the security of the believer, really it ended up being a debate on synergism versus monergism, which is not unusual, but about,

I think that was the 18th, I think it was the 13th, the preceding

Friday I believe, yeah, it was Friday the 13th, I remember Chris Aronson saying that, happy Friday the 13th he started.

Tony Costa debated Robert St. Genes basically on the immaculate conception. Now, I'd be interested in knowing, how many of you in here would feel confident for me to actually call upon you in public to define accurately the immaculate conception?

I have three people, four? Brother, my fellow elder,

Brother Callahan, what's the immaculate conception? Well, it is the view that the

Holy Spirit causes Mary to be pregnant, plain and simple.

Okay, there's one view, that's not the immaculate conception though. Yes, sir?

She was born without a sin. Without what kind of sin? Original sin.

Without the stain of original sin. Now, how did that happen though? Anybody know?

Now, wait a minute, what I said was not complete. How far do you want to go?

The only way in which you can have a sinless savior is if he comes into the world and he is not a son of Adam, he does not bear original sin, and that is not how far you want to go.

No, no, no. We're not talking about the immaculate conception. Let me back up.

I'm talking about the Roman dogma. Oh, the Roman. Well, you didn't make that so clear. Yeah.

The Roman dogma. This is where there's a lot of confusion, because, for example, when you talk about the feast of the immaculate conception, when you're talking to a

Roman Catholic, there is a dogma defined in December of 1854 as to what the immaculate conception is.

It has nothing to do with Jesus. It has nothing to do with Jesus at all. In fact, what's interesting is, in the debate that I was referring to, which is available online if you want to watch it,

Robert St. Genes, who I've debated five, six times I think, argued that without Mary's immaculate conception, you have no savior.

Because if Mary had had the stain of original sin, then Jesus would have contracted it from her. That's what he argued.

So, the Roman Catholic dogma of the immaculate conception.

Of Mary, right? Not Jesus. There's no, the conception of the virginal birth of Jesus is not, the reason the term immaculate conception is not used is because immaculate wouldn't be relevant to Jesus, because there wouldn't be any sin issue there in the first place.

The question is, how does Mary avoid the stain of original sin? Rome teaches that Mary was conceived and born without the stain of original sin.

And that through the rest of her life, she never committed sin either. Yes? How does that work though?

Because her parents were born in sin, right? That's correct. That's the point.

Yes sir? What is the biblical basis for that? No, are you kidding? There is no biblical basis for any of this.

That's the point. You sola scriptura person! No, there is no biblical basis.

It is used as an indicator. Here, Ciccara to Mene, in the angel's greeting to Mary, is filled with truckloads of theology.

Volumes and volumes into an angelic greeting. Which is also used of all believers, interestingly enough, in Ephesians.

So, so much for that. But, no, you can't find it in scripture. You can't find it in the first centuries of the

Christian, even during this period of time. No one in these centuries, many church fathers,

I'm going to mention this here in a moment, many church fathers, believed that Mary had committed sin.

Not serious sin, but doubting Jesus, impatience, so on and so forth.

The idea that the apostles had passed on this idea that Mary was sinless is just historically ridiculous.

Even though, when the dogma was defined in 1854, the document that defines it says it has been the universal faith of the church.

It's just, it's, if you know history, and you look at that statement, you can't believe both.

It's just not possible. But, once you accept Rome as the ultimate authority, then history is only a secondary authority, and Rome has to tell you what history means anyways.

But, the idea is, that Mary is protected from the stain of original sin.

How? You've got to be careful, folks. You've got to understand,

Rome has their apologists, and they spend a lot of time trying to come up with ways of talking to you. And we rarely spend much time talking about how to interact with them.

And I imagine this is probably one of maybe two Bible studies in the United States today where this is actually going to be discussed.

But, very briefly, because I want to get to the more basic things concerning Mary here. The idea is this.

If I'm, I'm going to steal this from Jerry Matatix. How many of you remember Jerry Matatix? Anybody remember Jerry? Oh yeah, good old

Jerry. This is Jerry's version. If I'm walking through a forest, and there's this sharp bend, and right around the bend is a huge pit of mud.

You can't see it until you get around this tree, and it's too late. And you're in. And I come along the other direction, and I see you wallowing in the mud, and you can't get out, and I get a branch, and I pull you out.

I have saved you, but you are covered in mud. That's how they'd view how

Jesus saves us. We've already fallen in, original sin, everything else, and Jesus saves us and pulls us out of the muck and the mire.

But what happens with Mary is she's just about to come around the corner, and God grabs her, and through a preemptive application of the merits of Jesus Christ, who has not yet been born, but time is irrelevant to God at that point.

So, through the preemptive applications of the merits of Christ, she is saved without ever having fallen into the pit.

So she never contracts the stain of original sin. She's just about to step in. She's pulled back by the preemptive application of the merits of Christ, which protects her from the stain of original sin.

That's the idea. Now, it then leads to the second question.

In 1950, what other dogma was defined?

The bodily assumption of Mary. Now, did that dogma define whether Mary ever died?

I've got a no, followed by a I'm not sure look. Did it?

Anyone? Did it define whether Mary died? No one knows. It did not. Both opinions are allowable within Roman Catholic theology today.

You could believe Mary died or that she didn't die. Now, I'm not sure how you could even come to the conclusion that she died.

Because the wages of sin is death. If she didn't have original sin, and she never sinned, then why would she die?

Good question. But all it says is that at the end of her earthly course, she was assumed body and soul, without corruption, into heaven.

So, those are the two last Marian dogmas that have been defined. There is actually four

Marian dogmas. We'll look at the other two here in a second. And there's a fifth one that millions of Roman Catholics around the world have signed petitions asking the

Pope to define it, but it has not yet been defined. Even though it's been taught as doctrine by Roman Catholic prelates and Popes for about 120 years.

And that is the idea that Mary is co -redemptrix and co -mediatrix with Christ. But that has not been defined as a dogma.

So, that debate between Dr. Tony Costa and Dr.

Robert St. Genes was on the 13th. It's available on YouTube. As I was coming down here today,

I realized the best term I've ever encountered for describing Bob St. Genes, knowing him as well as I do.

I think the first time I debated him was sometime in the late 90s. So, it's coming up on 20 years now.

Bob St. Genes is the curmudgeon of Catholic apologists. He really is. He's very curmudgeonly.

And he can be, he can smile and joke and laugh, but it's pretty rare. And he was definitely the curmudgeonly

Bob St. Genes in this debate. Very much so. So, it's available.

while we have a tremendous development in the first five centuries of what we would call

Mariology, or what would eventually become Mariolatry. What's the difference between those two?

What's the difference between Mariology and Mariolatry? And the worship of.

Exactly. So, Latria is worship. Ology, Logos, knowledge.

So, Mariology is study of Mary. Mariolatry is worship of Mary. Though, though, though,

Roman Catholics do not say they worship Mary. You might say, could have fooled me.

You know, when you're bowing down lighting candles, looks like worship to me. Yeah. You might want to see the debate

I did with Patrick Madrid on the veneration of saints and angels, but Rome makes a distinction between two words, and I guess we have some new.

Well, one's a combination. You've got Latria from Latruo, the highest form of worship.

You've got Dulia. Duluo means to serve.

Dulos is a slave. And then, you have

Hyperdulia, sort of in between, which is given to Mary. The reality is that in the

Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, both of these terms are often the translation of the same

Hebrew word, Ahav, to worship, to serve. To make the distinction that Rome does is unbiblical.

And I really, really doubt that if you had brought someone in front of Moses, who had been caught in their tent lighting candles to a statue, and if you said, well, come on now, this isn't

Latria, it's Dulia, I still think you would have been stoned. I really don't think that really would have flown at all.

Yes, sir? Can I say something about that? In the New Testament, there's not a distinction between Dulia and Hyperdulia, as they claim.

Hyperdulia, there's none. It doesn't exist. No, but they don't think there needs to be. I know, but here's the thing.

To Christ and God, the scriptures talk about service to Dulia, right? But Galatians 4 .8

You serve those which are by nature not God's. Therefore, she cannot be served because by nature she is not

God. So how do they think about this verse? It's a very solid verse.

It is a very solid verse. I used it in my debate with Patrick Madrid years and years ago. And guess what?

John Calvin used it in the Institutes of Christian Religion on the same subject. These are not new topics.

Unfortunately, they're frequently new to a lot of us because we don't deal with these issues. We don't deal with these areas.

But how do they deal with it? The same way that Bob dealt with every Biblical objection in the debate that I had with him.

The same way that he dealt with every Biblical objection to the bodily assumption when I debated him in Santa Fe on that subject.

And that is you're assuming that you have to have a scriptural basis for these things.

And the Roman Catholic doesn't have to have that. Scripture is only a part of tradition. It's the written part, but you have to have the oral part and therefore there you go.

That's how it's argued. Anyway, I should say this.

We tend to be afraid of Mary because of Roman Catholicism.

It's just like we don't use the term Eucharist because Rome uses it. Well, it's a beautiful Greek word for crying out loud.

It's been stolen from us. In the same way, there tends to be a fear of saying anything overly positive about Mary because you don't want to be like my

Grandpa Louise who just has pictures of Mary all over the house. We just want to try to avoid that for some reason.

And that frequently results in an imbalance and unwillingness to say even what the scriptures say concerning Mary.

The New Testament presented Mary as a faithful and obedient servant of God. A woman who was blessed to be the instrument of the

Messiah's birth. She was a faithful mother and wife. It's very obvious in the

New Testament that she had other children and a number of them in fact.

She wasn't just bopping around Palestine in the company with a bunch of young guys that weren't related to her.

That is sort of silly, but that's what people say. She was obviously the last time we see her a believing

Christian. She's with the disciples after the crucifixion. She's a believing follower of Jesus.

I think it's perfectly appropriate and proper that the New Testament does not do what most modern movies do and try to provide us with some kind of a psychological insight into how much

Mary understood and when she came to understand it. We're told she treasured these things in her heart.

I think that's a really wonderful way of saying that's far enough. You really don't need to go any farther than that.

Of course everybody does. The Gnostics of course went wacko in the second century on the subject.

Unfortunately the Gnostics are still with us in one shape or another. The fact is that she disappears from the scriptural record after the first chapters of Acts and plays no role in the early church as far as we can see.

There's nothing in scripture. Tradition will long after start developing stories about her of course.

Unfortunately that tradition is almost all completely based upon Gnostic works.

I forget how long ago it was now. Maybe a year or so ago. I read on the dividing line the

Protevangelium of James. It's a Gnostic work. Silly work to be perfectly honest with you.

When you read it it's just like really? Honestly? It became very popular in the early church and really becomes the foundation for almost all of the later

Roman Catholic departures from the Bible concerning Mary.

Again not derived from scripture but derived from other things. She is mentioned only as the virgin mother of Christ up until Irenaeus.

Irenaeus remember writing against the Gnostics writing at the end of the 2nd century. Who begins to parallel her with Eve.

Irenaeus begins the development by paralleling her with Eve. The Gnostic Gospels however made much of her.

Such works as the Ascension of Isaiah and the Protevangelium of James just mentioned that to begin to attribute things to her such as perpetual virginity.

So fairly early on we are having an explosion of attendance here today.

Nice problem to have. Feel free to grab a chair and pull on in there.

The four Marian dogmas perpetual virginity of Mary Mary as the mother of God Immaculate Conception, Bodily Ascension The fifth that is trying to be defined is the idea of Mary as co -redemptrix and co -mediatrix which has not been defined but has been taught.

Perpetual virginity what does that mean? Obviously it involves a denial that Mary had any other children.

The idea being that the womb that bore the Messiah could not be sullied to bear sinful children as if having children sullies you in the first place.

There's obviously some extra biblical stuff going on here because there's nothing in scripture anywhere that begins to suggest the ones who are described as Jesus' brothers and sisters were anything other than Jesus' brothers and sisters.

Yes, I've heard all of the mental gymnastics to turn brothers and sisters into cousins and distant relatives and all the rest of that stuff.

There just isn't any reason to do it other than Rome tells you to do it and that's why you end up doing it.

Perpetual virginity as it appears in the Protevangelium of James goes beyond that.

I have a real serious problem with the Roman Catholic concept because I believe it fundamentally undercuts the incarnation and the atoning work of Christ.

Why? Because the assertion is that Mary remained perpetually virgin not just in the sense that she had relationships did not have any relationship with any man, but they emphasize the physical nature of this which is impossible if Jesus was born naturally.

And so in essence in the Gnostic Gospels, Jesus to use a Star Trek analogy beams out of Mary.

There's no pain, no blood no nothing, just and there you are.

You can use the old original series beaming out, you can use the next generation

Voyager, it just doesn't matter which one you use all of a sudden and there he is.

And those of you who are not Star Trek people are going, what is he talking about? If you're going to follow me, you're going to need just a you don't have to watch all of them, but just a few episodes and you'll be able to catch a lot of the analogies as they go by.

I promise not to use any Star Wars analogies because that's heresy. Anyway so back to the serious part and that being, if Jesus beams out of Mary, how do you affirm his true humanity?

He could have just could have just beamed down as a full grown human. Why nine months of gestation if you're just going to and there you are.

And again, it doesn't there's nothing biblical that even begins to suggest it, and it comes, even the better Roman Catholic historians

I say better in the sense of honest to be perfectly honest with you, will recognize yeah, this came from the protevangelium of James, it became very popular, and so because it was a popular work to be read it was never considered canonical, but because it was popular to be read by people, then it started ending up in sermons and preaching and that's where it came from.

And then you had the realm of monasticism feeding into this and you see why perpetual virginity of Mary, she becomes the ideal woman who never gives in to sensual temptation.

Yes sir? Parthenos in the Greek means an unmarried woman.

In that sense, she became a virgin because she never got married, actually. Except the

Parthenon In that sense, yeah. But my understanding is that in the first century

Parthenos wasn't just the same as Alma in Hebrew, it was the same as Bethula, it was actually a virgin.

For example, when Luke uses it, he uses it in a very specific way. Because at that time, an unmarried woman had to be a virgin.

Well, exactly. So it was contained in the concept in the word itself, in the semantic domain,

I think it really is there. So anyway so let me see here yeah,

I just mentioned with reference to her sinlessness Irenaeus Tertullian Origen John Chrysostom Cyril of Alexandria and Basil of Caesarea all felt

Mary had sinned and doubted Christ. Obviously, if there was some overriding apostolic teaching that Mary was actually sinless it's not like they preached a sermon on Mary's great sin.

These were comments made in passing and sometimes comments made in passing reveal more about a person's theology than the central core of sermons they made.

Now why would that be? Because if I just mention in passing a belief that Mary sinned in doubting

Christ or in being impatient with Christ or something like that and I don't even bother expanding upon it.

What that means is I don't expect anyone to be disagreeing with me. I'm not having to preach a whole sermon on it.

I'm expecting my audience to be going with me and I don't have to defend it which means in my mind that's the universal view of everybody around me.

And so it's just painfully obvious and many again many are the

Roman Catholic historians who will admit that this is an unknown belief the sinlessness of Mary in the early church and that it's only under the almost relentless pressure of the centuries of the continuing exaltation of Mary over time that this idea eventually well the whole idea going all the way back to the idea of protecting her from original sin as we'll see later on that was developed by a monk who had a name which from my perspective would preclude him from ever coming up with any meaningful theological insights at all.

His name was Edmer Edmer E -A -D -M -E -R Is there anyone in this room that wants to believe anything that was first developed by someone named

Edmer? Not me not me, I'm not going there but Edmer in the 12th century was the first to promote the modern doctrine of Rome and that doctrine it took it 600 years but eventually this relentless pressure, which we'll talk about more a little bit later on, if you really want to know why the modern movement, the modern

Marian movement exists, it's because since Rome has no finished gospel, what they believe is they needed a mediator with the mediator they need someone nicer than Jesus and that's his mommy

I can prove that with numerous citations if you really want me to, but we'll get to it at a later point

Now, as I mentioned just briefly, the bodily assumption of Mary, made dogma by Rome in 1950 is first encountered about 500 years after Christ according to Roman Catholic historian and Mariologist Juniper Carroll quote, the first expressed witness in the

West to a genuine assumption comes to us in an apocryphal gospel the transitive Beate Maria of Pseudo Milito and what in the world is that?

Well, there are a lot of apocryphal gospels and Pseudo Milito guess who that is? That's someone pretending that they're

Milito Sardis. Remember we talked about Milito Sardis? I read to you from some of his writings, the

Passover sermon where he identified Jesus as God well, hundreds of years later someone wants to write a book and wants to market it a little bit better and so how do you do that?

You attach somebody else's name to it that didn't actually write it and so somebody forging a book hundreds of years later is the first one to even mention the idea of the assumption of Mary into heaven after her death that's a half millennium after the birth of Christ and interestingly enough

Pope Galatius placed that book on what would be the ancient equivalent of the

Index, the Index Prohibitorum. He anathematized it. He said it was filled with heresy.

He didn't identify that specifically as heresy. He didn't need to. He just simply said that book. So it's interesting that the first book that even proposes it was condemned by the current

Pope and 1 ,300 years later dogma. Can't question it.

That's what happens when you don't believe in Sola Scriptura. You have things that are initially considered to be pure fabrications all of a sudden becoming dogma a millennium later all the time claiming that you are the one true church and that you're continuing apostolic tradition, blah, blah, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So I'll probably be discussing some of that. My debate with Christopher Ferrara, a

Roman Catholic attorney on that subject is also on YouTube somewhere. It was interesting.

There was an illustration during that debate of something that we will be seeing a little bit later on and that is the role of forged documents in the development of theology and history.

This happened a lot. It's easier for us to obviously today detect forgeries than it was for people long, long ago.

Forged documents have had a huge impact in the development primarily of the doctrine of the papacy but also in the doctrine of Mary.

Somewhere during the debate, my opponent quoted Augustine as promoting the

Immaculate Conception of Mary. I knew that he didn't believe that. I knew that every Roman Catholic source I'd ever read on Augustine also said he didn't believe that.

I'd never heard this quote before and my response when he read it was, I'm perfectly honest with you. I really, where did you get that?

I really doubt the accuracy of that citation. Of course, sitting in the middle of the debate it's sort of hard to do an instant search on it.

Did so right afterwards and of course, it was fraudulent. It is ascribed to Augustine but it is recognized as not having been written by Augustine.

It's still being done today. I'm not saying that Christopher Ferrara said, ah, I found a quote. I know

Augustine never said it but no. Especially the believing Roman Catholic will have a tendency to accept things that shouldn't be accepted and that kind of material is out there.

It almost seems to hit me this way. Evidently, I'm just horrible at organizing things but we have four minutes according to the clock on the wall and I am looking at the next major portion of material.

All this seems to work that way but the next section will take us a little while because it has so much relevance to us today and in fact, interestingly enough, last summer this section of material exploded across the evangelical world and many people are a little bit more familiar today with this subject in ancient church history than they were only a year ago which

I suppose is a good thing and that is the nature of God in the

Antonicean Fathers leading up to the Council of Nicaea. If you know what I'm talking about, there still is a major controversy between well -known evangelicals on what's called the eternal submission or not subjugation but eternal submission of the son to the father.

What's the nature of the relationship between the son and the father? Is this something that is voluntarily done on the son's part or is it by nature a submission that as son he's always subject eternal subjection.

Certain people, well -known people Bruce Ware, Wayne Grudem who teaches at Phoenix Seminary were promoting the idea of a eternal submission of the son to the father in the

Trinity as part of their apologetic against egalitarianism in the church.

They're very much involved in seeking to maintain proper roles of men and women in the hierarchy of the church, relationship to the church so on and so forth and since the people who were promoting, they're complementarians, they're fighting egalitarianism.

The egalitarians were basically saying, well see there's no natural submission of father and son there's no natural relationship of male and female and they had emphasized this idea that well there is.

Well it sort of blew up last year because I know I've always had a problem with that and some other people finally took note of some of the statements that were being made and said no way,

Jesus and in fact of course you go back and you read Calvin. Calvin disagreed with some of the anti -Nicene, some of the post -Nicene fathers.

Nicaea is the council of Nicaea so 325 325

He beat you to it. You were daydreaming there bro, sorry. Well the sound gets to him before it gets to you so we'll just consider that as part of it but Nicaea is sort of used as a dividing line so you have the anti -Nicene fathers, if a person flourished or wrote before Nicaea.

The Nicene fathers like Athanasius at the time post -Nicene fathers, Augustine would be a post -Nicene father.

Calvin disagreed with many of the post -Nicene formulations and emphasized if you've read book one of the institutes emphasized that the son is alta theos,

God of himself not derivatively from the father and this is an important issue and again for us it leads us to questions that are always good questions to be thinking about and that is what's the authority of a creed?

What's the authority of the Nicene creed? If you question it, people are going to go, you're a heretic but we don't believe,

I bet you how many of you in here have read anything else whatsoever that came from the council of Nicaea other than its creed?

What did you read? I read an extract of the whole thing. The canons? Yeah, I've had to deal with all the canons and stuff like that because there's canons that discuss church discipline, the relationship of Rome to Constantinople and all the rest of this stuff.

There's nobody in here that would give a second thought to investing authority in the canons of the council of Nicaea.

But the creed? Different thing. Why? And so that would be one of the things that we'll be struggling with, thinking about as we look at the nature of God in the

Antonicene fathers. If you're visiting with us and you're going, what did

I stumble into? I thought this was a Bible study class. We're doing church history. This is our 25th lesson.

These folks here are long suffering. They've been stuck with me for a long time now.

I started teaching Bible study here in 1989 and if you're wondering, this is pretty much the same material you'd get in most seminary classes.

So this, yeah. So if you're going, wow, you go through a lot of detail. Yep, yep. No one's going to be arguing when you get done that we skipped over too much.

Real quick because we're out of time. Real quick. Does the reform of church believe in the eternal sonship of Christ?

Yes. That he was eternally son. Yes. Not that he became son. No. Definitely affirmed the eternal sonship of Christ.

Yes. Second person in the Trinity, but yes, the relationship is an eternal one. Okay, let's close the word of prayer.

Father, we do thank you for this time. Once again, the freedom that we have to consider what you've done in the past and desire that you would help us to see how we should face the future and how we can do so in a way that honors you.

We ask that you be with us now as we go into worship. May you be honored and glorified in all it takes place. We pray in Christ's name.