The Council of Nicaea

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I'm not sure how many of you were here last week.
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I think most of you were, but some of you were not.
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I have handouts that I'd like to ensure that you get.
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So I'm going to give you, Ashley, both of these if you'll walk around.
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One of them is the outline, and the other is a copy of the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, and the Athanasian Creed.
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Last week we ended our lesson talking about the Apostles' Creed.
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And if you have your notes, or as they're being passed out, if you'll turn there, you'll notice right underneath the Apostles' Creed is the Nicene Creed.
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And as we tonight talk about the Nicene Creed, I want to begin with an anecdote that I think, though it's not completely relevant to the study of the Trinity, it is relevant to the season.
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How many of you know the name Nicholas of Myra? Okay? One of you? Two of you? How many of you learned it because of my Facebook today? One of you? That's okay, that's okay.
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I did put it up earlier, and I didn't know how many would see it.
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Nicholas of Myra was known for his great benevolence.
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And Nicholas of Myra was one who was known to care for the poor.
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He was known to care for those who were in need.
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He did a particularly good deed to three daughters of a widower who had a need, and he helped take care of them, and in doing so, sort of got branded with the reputation of being a very benevolent Christian leader.
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And later, some of those things would be passed down in the form of an archetype that we now call Santa Claus.
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And we know that's where St.
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Nicholas, Santa Christa, comes from, Santa Claus.
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And so we think of St.
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Nick.
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That's St.
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Nicholas of Myra, or Nicolaus of Myra.
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Well, I mention him, as I said, because this is Christmas.
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We're only a few weeks away from the holiday.
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And also because St.
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Nicholas of Myra, or Nicolaus of Myra, was at the Council of Nicaea.
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He was one of the 318 bishops, approximately 318 bishops, who was there to deal with the issue of the Arian controversy, the issue of the heretic Arius.
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And I want to put his name down just so we kind of keep in mind who we're talking about.
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Arius was a leader who was teaching about the person of Jesus Christ.
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That though he taught that Jesus Christ was divine, he did not believe that Jesus Christ was of the same type of divinity as the Father.
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That his divinity was a lesser divinity than that of the Father.
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And thus he taught essentially that Jesus was not God, but that he was divine, a lesser form of God.
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And Nicolaus of Myra, according to church tradition, became so enraged with Arius that during Arius' testimony, Nicolaus, a little 5 foot tall bishop, walked over and smacked him in the face.
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This is what the tradition says.
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And according to the tradition, he was sanctioned and actually got in trouble for his action.
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But I just find it interesting, and I love to tell this story, especially this time of year, I find it interesting that this man, who we know very little about, there's so much more mystery surrounding him than reality.
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We don't know much about him.
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But what we do know is that he had a passion for the truth about the nature of Christ.
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And if this story is the truth, his passion was one that even led him to maybe doing something that maybe wasn't the right thing to do at the time, but it demonstrated the intensity with which he held that passion.
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And so that's just, like I said, it's sort of an anecdotal thing for the season, but it also leads us into the conversation tonight about the Council of Nicaea.
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How many of you, before this series began, by show of hands, and I do want to know, how many of you, before this series began, had heard about the Council of Nicaea? Okay.
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All right.
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That's an important question because, honestly, the Council of Nicaea is an important historical event, but it is a historical event that is very, very miscommunicated as to what happened.
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Oftentimes what you will hear is you will hear people say it was at the Council of Nicaea that Constantine took over the church, or that it was at the Council of Nicaea that Constantine enthroned Jesus as God, or that it was at the Council of Nicaea that Constantine, this is a big one, Constantine threw out the books that he didn't like and he brought together the books that he did like.
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And the reason why you have 27 New Testament books and you don't have the Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, or the Gospel of Judas, or any of those other books, is because Constantine threw those books out.
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By the way, that last one has zero, absolutely zero, historical validity at all.
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If you read the Canons of Nicaea and the history of Nicaea, the issue of the Canon of Scripture was not the focus, and it was not the issue, and there was no authoritative canon that came out of the Council of Nicaea.
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And those who argue that it did are arguing from absolute ignorance.
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It just did not happen.
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But if you've read the Da Vinci Code, or maybe you've seen the film, or maybe somebody who read it challenged you at a Starbucks when you were trying to witness to them, if you go to Starbucks, I don't know, but maybe they challenged you at the McDonald's, I don't know, wherever you go, and they said, well, Constantine hijacked Christianity in 325.
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That's the common secular argument to oppose Christianity, and it's an argument against what they often will call Christian imperialism, where Constantine used Christianity as a hammer with which to rule.
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Now, in a sense, that is not altogether wrong.
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There is a sense in which historically the Christian religion was used through the Roman Empire as a method of population rule and control.
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So there is some validity to how it was misused, particularly throughout the Dark Ages and with the popes.
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I forget the name of the king, but one of the popes who crowned the king, Charlemagne, crowned the king for the purpose of demonstrating that the pope had the authority over the king.
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The king comes forward to receive his communion, and while he's receiving communion, the pope produces a crown, places it upon his head, and thus crowns him king.
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And what does that demonstrate to the people? The person who gives the crown has the authority to give the crown, and thus demonstrating his authority as God's representative.
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And oftentimes that was the debate in the Middle Ages and even into the Reformation times was who had the right authority over men.
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Was it the church or the state? And therein lies that big question of the division between church and state.
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And by the way, historically, we believe, at least I say we, I, as a reformer, as a Baptist particularly, I'm not affiliated with a Baptist nomination, but a person who believes in Baptistic principles, I would say I agree with the separation of church and state in this regard.
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I do not believe that it is the state's job to manage the church and to regulate the business of the church.
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Neither do I necessarily believe it's the church's job to regulate the business of the state.
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Romans 13 tells us that the state, there's authority placed in the state, and they have responsibility to minister there in that sphere of power.
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And the church has its responsibility to minister in its sphere of power.
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Now I've gotten way off the subject.
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But you understand, though, what I'm saying is there are some things historically that happened out of Nicaea and leading into the Holy Roman Empire which did have some influence.
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But a lot of what you hear about crowning Jesus as God, that's not true.
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Adjusting the books of the Bible and taking out the Gospel of Thomas and others, not true.
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These things are just historically fiction.
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They are just not true.
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So, tonight we're going to talk about what was the focus of the Council of Nicaea and what was the heresy.
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Yes, dear.
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Yeah.
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Well, the focus was more, the issue about proving that Jesus was man was an issue that dealt more with the Gnostics because the Gnostics believed that anything material was evil.
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So they believed that Jesus was form but not human form because if he was truly human, he would have to be evil.
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So there was, when you see John saying, if anybody doesn't believe that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, he is not of God.
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That phrase, in the flesh, is important because that's saying something about the way Jesus came.
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He didn't just come as phantom, he didn't just come as spirit, but he came in the flesh.
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And there were those who were saying if he came in the flesh, he would have to be evil because all matter is inherently evil.
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And so that was part of the debate.
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Not everybody was arguing whether or not, but that was part of that issue.
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And like I said, so that was the bigger issue, was not whether or not he was God, it was whether or not he was truly man.
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And the first two centuries of the church is when they're dealing with these Gnostics and these false teachings.
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Like I said, it's by the third and fourth centuries is when you start dealing with the Arian controversy and others surrounding that.
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You're welcome.
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Alright, the purpose of the Council of Nicaea, as we've already mentioned, was to settle a dispute over the heresy that was being taught in the early 300s called Arianism, which comes, obviously, from the heretic Arius.
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And I lovingly call him the heretic Arius.
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I guess I can just call him Arius, you guys know.
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He was gaining a wide following by teaching that Jesus was not fully God incarnate, but was simply a created being.
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And this dispute was tearing Constantine's empire apart.
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It may not make much sense to us today because we live in an eclectic society.
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We live in a society where you could literally be working right now in a job where you have Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, and atheists all working in the same building.
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Not necessarily so in this time in history.
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Your beliefs sort of sanctioned you off and separated you in society and there was a lot of division.
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It has been said that in Constantine's kingdom, Constantinople, he might be asked, before he could buy bread, if God the Son is begotten or unbegotten.
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That such a theological question would determine whether or not a person was worthy enough to be doing business with you.
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Is God the Son begotten or unbegotten? I mean, it was a serious matter of the day and Constantine saw that it was creating great division in the kingdom and so as a result, he wasn't necessarily, and I believe this based on history and based on what I think I know about him, he wasn't necessarily interested in proposing one theological system over another.
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He wanted the fighting and the issue to be put to bed.
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Oftentimes, as white politicians do, they don't really care how it ends up as long as they look good on the other side and everything's smooth.
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They don't really care.
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And so the infighting, in an attempt to bring it to be in a conclusion, Constantine brought together a council of approximately 318 bishops and they came together to ask the question.
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And this is the ultimate, I guess, the ultimate question of Nicaea and I don't want to write on the board, but I'll...
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Was Jesus fully God and fully man? Was Jesus half God and half man? Was he all man and not divine? And that was really the three options.
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Is he fully God and fully man? Is he half God and half man? Or is he all man, no God? So the creed that came out of this, the council came together, there was discussion, there was conversation, Arius made his points.
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Arius was condemned, by the way, by the council, even though historically, and this is the sad reality of history, historically, after the council of Nicaea, they had something called the Arian Uprising, which is where, because Arius didn't just go away, there were those who followed him and there were more Arians after the council of Nicaea, unfortunately, than before.
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And even Constantine's son became an Arian and it became a huge issue.
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So this didn't solve all the problems as it were, but this did establish what the bishops who came together, it established what the teaching of the church was.
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What was the church teaching at this time? So let's read the Nicene Creed.
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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.
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Right now you can see that if you look back up at the Apostles' Creed, there is a similar vein, but it's more expressive.
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You can automatically see that they've decided to put more in.
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They've referenced Him as the maker of heaven and earth, all that is seen and unseen.
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We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father, through Him all things were made.
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For us and for our salvation He came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit, and the Virgin Mary, and became truly human.
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Now, if you look back up at the Apostles' Creed, you'll notice it just says, I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord.
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As I said last week, that's not necessarily a Trinitarian confession, but it references all three members of the Trinity.
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The Nicene Creed is expressing so much more about the person of Jesus Christ and the key, and I'm going to be preaching on this somewhat Sunday, the key word here that is huge is the word begotten.
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This is not a good marker, so if you'll throw that away.
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Alright, so the word begotten.
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Where do you think the word begotten came from? Scripture.
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I mean, most of us are familiar with where at least one of the Bible verses, it is very popular.
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Which one is that? John 3.16, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
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Right? And so that term became pregnant with meaning.
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But as you know, the 4th century bishops did not speak English.
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So they didn't say begotten.
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What word did they use? This is important, because this is the word that the Scripture uses.
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What is it? Geneo is the root, but there is a prefix.
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Monogenes.
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Yeah.
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Monogenes.
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Monogenes is the Greek term.
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It is the Greek term that is used in John 3.16.
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It is also used in 1 John 4, which is what we are going to be studying Sunday in my sermon.
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Where it says, This is love, not that we have loved God, but He loved us and sent His Son to die for us.
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In that same text it calls Him the only begotten.
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That phrase, monogenes.
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We know what mono means, right? What? Means one.
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What is genes? Say it in English.
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Genes.
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It is genes.
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It actually is a transliteration of the Greek word genes.
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What did you say? No.
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It is a kind.
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When you talk about someone's genes, what are you talking about? Where they came from.
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They are kind.
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I share my genes with my son, not these.
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When my wife gave birth to my son, I passed on a kind.
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My kind.
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And so did she.
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He got some of her kind and some of my kind, and they became a kind.
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So it is one kind.
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There is more to genes than that.
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Genes speaks of origin.
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This is why you talk about the word genesis.
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All the titles of the Old Testament, all the New Testament, it is all the Greek titles.
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Genesis, it is the origins.
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That is what it means.
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So it can speak of kind, it can speak of origin.
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So when you talk about monogenesis, you are speaking of the kind, or the one of a kind.
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So when you say that Christ is begotten, often times in English, that gives birth to the idea of being created.
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And this is why the term in English is so anemic.
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It is not enough.
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Because in English, you hear the word begotten, you automatically think, well if he is God's begotten, there was a time when he wasn't.
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Because begotten, he had to have not been at some time.
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And that is why, and I think these men were geniuses.
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I heard a guy say the other day, he said, we are so much smarter than our ancestors.
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And this guy couldn't tie his own shoe.
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I mean this guy was, he is just some young guy, and we are so much smarter than our ancestors.
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Did you know that the, they find temples that were built, that had air conditioning.
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Not like air conditioning freon like we have, but they were built in such a way, that they would capture wind and move it through, and what was it? Yeah, and they had plumbing, that was used gravity and all kinds of stuff, because they didn't have electrical pumps like we do.
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They were geniuses.
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What's that? Yeah, this is awesome.
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How did they set up that stone pillar with the four, you know, what is it called over in England? Stonehenge.
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Stonehenge.
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How did they get them up there, you know? Well, yeah.
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Yeah, everybody knows.
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What I am saying is, they had to do it without a crane.
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Unless they used a bunch of birds, or cranes.
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No, what I am saying is, they really were not cavemen.
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They were not ignorant savages.
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These were men of great intelligence and thought, and they didn't have Facebook, and they didn't have Google, so they spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff.
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They didn't have, they didn't spend their Friday nights watching television.
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They spent their Friday nights wondering about begotten or unbegotten.
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So this became a serious issue for these guys.
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And so, the term begotten was followed by the term not made, so that future generations would understand that we are not saying that Christ is created.
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We are saying He is begotten but not created.
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He is God from God, light from light, true God of true God, begotten but not made.
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Now I want to give you an analogy.
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You can remember that a few weeks ago, I told you, do not accept any analogy on the doctrine of the Trinity, because they're all doomed to failure, because there's nothing quite analogous to the doctrine of the Trinity, and then I immediately followed up with an analogy.
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Well, I'm saying it again.
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This is not a perfect analogy, but it's the best one I've got, and because we as human beings tend to learn by example best, I want to give you an example to help you understand what I believe these men were trying to say.
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Because when they were talking about Christ being begotten, they were saying that He was from the Father of the same kind, one kind, but not made.
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How can that be? Well, I want you to imagine that my thoughts have a personality.
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I mean, I have a personality and I have thoughts, but imagine my thoughts are personal, and they are distinct from me.
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They're not, but for a moment I want you to imagine.
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And I hope this doesn't just totally throw everybody off the rails.
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This helped me.
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Hopefully it'll help you.
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How long have I had thought? As long as I have been.
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Right? From the moment I was born.
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You say, well, you were conceived in the womb before you were born.
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As I said, not a perfect analogy, but essentially from the time of my arrival, there have been thoughts.
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Does the thought come from me? Yes.
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But is it at the same time as old as me? Yes.
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Because it comes from me, but it's been here as long as I have.
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That's what I'm saying.
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So it's as old as I am.
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I know it's a very rudimentary analogy.
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But what I'm trying to say is, Christ can come from God and not be made, because God is eternal and Christ is eternal, and yet He is from Him.
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In the same way that my mind, my thoughts, have been with me since I began, God doesn't have a beginning.
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Christ is from God and yet doesn't have a beginning.
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That's what they were trying to say.
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He's from God, but not made by God.
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There wasn't a time when He wasn't.
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There wasn't a time when God said, Hey, I need me a Jesus.
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He has always been and yet always been from Him.
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The Father begets the Son in that way, always.
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He is eternally begotten.
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This is where we get the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Christ.
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Christ did not become the Son of God when He was born in the manger.
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He was the Son of God always.
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That is the eternal Sonship of Christ.
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By the way, that is a doctrine that up until the, I want to say the 80s, John MacArthur did not believe that, and he repented.
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He believed that Jesus Christ was not the Son until Bethlehem, and he was challenged.
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He went to his study, and he came out repentant of it.
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It's an interesting story, and I encourage you to look that up.
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This is not an easy thing to wrap your head around, is what I'm trying to say.
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No, it doesn't imply subordination.
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It's more economic in the sense of you have God the Father, who begets the Son eternally, and they too from, proceed the Spirit.
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Or from them too, proceed the Spirit.
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And that's why we say there's, and it comes up in a second.
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Huh? Oh yeah, the Spirit eternally as well, and that's what it's about to say, because it goes on to talk about the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
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All together, because there was never a beginning.
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And we can't, that's the part where our minds go, and we kind of like can't get our mind around that.
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How can something be from something without having a beginning, but how can something not have a beginning? So we have to take a step back and say, we don't even understand eternity in its fullness.
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So to understand how something can be from something else and not be, you know.
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And it is by faith, but it's also in recognition of how God has revealed Himself.
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Christ has been revealed to us as the begotten of the Father, and yet not created by the Father.
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No, I don't believe so.
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No, no, in fact I would say that the only change has been that the Son took on flesh and became incarnate.
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That's the change, if you want to say there was a change, and we say, well, God doesn't change.
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Well, God didn't change in His nature when He took on flesh.
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What He did was He adopted a fleshly nature so as to do what He could not do as God, and that was represent man to God.
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Condescended, took on flesh so that He could be the priest.
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He humbled Himself.
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Yeah, and there is a, in Philippians 2 it talks about that, taking on that humility and then later being exalted again.
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Remember what He said in John 17, glorify Me with that glory that we had before the world was.
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So there is a condescension.
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This is why He says certain things in the flesh that don't sound like God.
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Like when He says things like I have not come to do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.
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That doesn't sound like God speaking, but He's saying that because He's condescended in that time and for that time.
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When He said, well, there are certain things like the end, I don't know, only the Father, right? He's speaking from His human perspective.
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He's speaking from the perspective of the situation that He's in.
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And again, this was something that the framers of the creed are wanting us to understand.
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The key is this.
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Christ is from the Father, but Christ is not made by the Father.
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Does that make sense? Okay, and that's what they're saying.
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Yeah, if not, we would have to say that at some point, God made Jesus.
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And that is what Jehovah Witnesses believe.
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They believe that God made, actually that He made Michael the Archangel.
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That Michael the Archangel is who Jesus is.
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That when He became Jesus, He became incarnate in the person of Jesus.
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Actually, they don't even believe really in incarnation.
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They believe in recreation, which is different.
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And they believe He was recreated as the person Jesus.
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And when Jesus died, He was recreated again as the Archangel Michael again.
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And now that's who He is again.
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And so it's a really, it's a very mind-boggling perspective.
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But yes, this is, and it is believed that Jesus, there was a time when Jesus wasn't.
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And that was the big issue.
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Is there a time when Jesus was not? And that's what Arius was saying.
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Yes, there was a time when Jesus wasn't.
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And Athanasius and the others were saying, no, there's never been a time when Jesus was not.
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Yes, my dear.
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Yeah, and if you read that in the Jehovah Witness translation, it says all other things.
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They add the word other so as to identify Christ as a created being who created all other things.
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It's a slick little sort of sleight of hand addition.
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Yes.
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The familial, yes.
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And I think that Son can have the familial sense of subordination, which does, and in fact, I'm going to be giving a lecture on this next month.
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And I've been asked to address the issue of the eternal subordination of the Son, which is a doctrine that's recently become more popular.
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Even though I don't believe it's a true doctrine, it's become more popular even among some reformed circles.
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Whether or not the Son has eternally been subordinate to the Father.
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And I don't believe that He has.
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I don't believe there's any reason why there would be subordination when the two share a perfect will.
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Why would there be subordination? And that's my, mine is from more of a practical perspective.
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Not so much just a theological perspective, but the practical application is if you have two beings with a perfect will, there's never a need for subordination.
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When Christ was in the flesh, He says, Father, take this cup from me, because He's in the flesh.
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Not in the flesh in a sinful way, but He's saying from the fleshly perspective, take this cup from me.
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But He says what? Nevertheless, not my will, but Thy will be done.
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Yes.
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Well, but I still think eternal sonship is an appropriate designation because He's from the Father.
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Not in the sense of being created, but in the sense of identity.
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That He is God of God.
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Yes, sir.
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Yeah, I think to your point, I forget where in Ephesians it said, maybe in chapter four where it said in, yeah, it might have been chapter four where it said in the fullness of time, God sent forth His son.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, I think what really sticks out to me about that particular passage is that it doesn't say that He sent the one who would become His son.
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That's true.
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He sent forth His son, indicating that He already was.
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That's good.
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With the Psalm, I believe it was the Psalm 2 passage where it talks about kiss the son.
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Yeah.
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So, yeah, the eternal generation of the son, eternal sonship of Christ is a biblical doctrine.
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Yeah.
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Dale, I can't, I didn't mean to bypass you.
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No, no, no, please.
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Okay.
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Yes, sir.
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Did Arius have an agenda or just honest misunderstanding? I don't know.
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We all have an agenda.
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Yeah, everybody has an agenda.
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I do not know.
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I will say this.
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There are two men in history that really are interesting to me.
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Arius and Michael Servaitis.
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And both of them held the same doctrine.
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And both of them were condemned as heretics and Michael Servaitis died as a heretic.
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He was burned at the stake in Geneva.
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He is the one that Calvin is often accused of murdering.
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Calvin didn't murder him.
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Calvin did testify at his trial and he was put to stake, put to the burnt stake by the city, the church.
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You'll often hear, and this is true, you'll hear Catholics will say, we never burned anyone at the stake.
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Technically, that's true.
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They would condemn a person as a heretic and the state would carry out the execution.
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So technically, the church, the Catholic church never burned anyone.
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It was the state that did it.
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So if you ever hear that argument, it's a fine hair to split.
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But it is, they are making a point.
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The state carried out the execution.
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Likewise with Michael Servaitis.
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He came to Geneva trying to seek asylum, or not asylum, trying to seek a friendship with Calvin.
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But he came as a non-Trinitarian.
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He came as one who didn't believe in the eternal nature of Christ.
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He came as essentially an Arian and his theology, some differences, but it was essentially a similar doctrine.
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And he even sent letters to Calvin saying this is what I believe.
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I want you to come to this same conclusion that I do.
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And Calvin said, don't come here.
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You won't leave.
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And he was not wrong.
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No, he didn't.
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He didn't make it out.
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And I just say, when I say these two men interest me, it's because they were separated by a thousand years of history or more.
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You have Arius is in 300.
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You have Servaitis is in the 1500s.
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And both of them held to a similar false doctrine of the nature of Christ.
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And Servaitis paid for that with his life.
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And it's just historically, I find them to be two interesting characters.
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But I don't know their motivations.
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But I want to say this though.
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On that, the reason why I brought it up, I think Servaitis really had the motivation of trying to make an argument that he believed it.
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You can be sincere and sincerely wrong.
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I mean, I know Muslims who are sincerely Muslim and they're wrong.
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And so I think that that's the same as it is with Servaitis.
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I think he was sincere.
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Arius, I don't know enough historically to say, but I think Servaitis was.
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I think he was sincere.
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Okay, any other before we move on? I want to talk about now the Holy Spirit as he's referenced.
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Because he goes on to talk about Jesus and what happened in his incarnation.
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It says, For our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
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He suffered death and was buried.
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On the third day, he rose again.
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In accordance with the Scriptures, he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
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He will come again in glory and judge the living and the dead.
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And his kingdom will have no end.
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That's the middle section is really the heart of the Nicene Creed.
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Because it still doesn't say a whole lot about the Father.
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And even what it says about the Spirit is even not that much.
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But what it says about Christ is quite a bit.
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But now it moves to the third clause, if you will, the section on the Spirit.
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It says, We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, referencing him as the Lord, the Spirit of Potias, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.
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Here is a tidbit of historical information.
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That term, and the Son, is called the Philoque clause.
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And it was the reason for the division.
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Well, one of the reasons for the division between the Eastern and Western Church in 1056 A.D.
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Because the original Nicene Creed said he proceeds from the Father.
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And it was later that the Church added the term from the Father and the Son.
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And the Eastern Church did not accept that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but only believed that he proceeded from the Father only.
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And as a result, there was a division.
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The bigger reason for the division, though, was not the theological issue.
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The bigger division was that it was done without their consent.
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The addition was made under the authority of the Pope, which was not recognized by the Eastern Church.
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So it was more of a political issue versus a theological issue.
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But if you ever heard or see something called the Philoque clause, that's the reference.
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I believe that the Western Church is correct.
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I don't have a problem because Jesus said, He said, I will pray the Father and He will send another Comforter.
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Another Comforter is one like me.
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And I don't think that there's a reason to believe that the Spirit doesn't proceed from Christ as well.
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He's called the Spirit of Christ in Romans chapter 8.
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If you do not have the Spirit of Christ, you do not belong to Him.
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So I don't have an issue with saying He proceeds from the Father and the Son.
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But that is one of those little theological hair splits that can cause division as we have seen.
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But again, the key here though, He is called the Lord.
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He proceeds from the Father and the Son, which is different than being begotten.
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He's proceeding.
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But in a sense, still, it's an eternal procession.
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As we said, the Son is eternally begotten, the Spirit eternally proceeds.
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He does not proceed from a given point in time, but has always proceeded.
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And it is interesting, if you read Genesis chapter 1, the first member of the Trinity by name mentioned is the Spirit.
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Because in the beginning, God, that term is Elohim.
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And Elohim, by the way, is the plural.
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We talked about that a while back.
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But the Elohim created the heavens and the earth.
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And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the waters.
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And the Spirit of God hovered over the deep.
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So we see right there, the first member of the Trinity who is mentioned by name, as it were, would be the Spirit.
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And He's mentioned all throughout the Old Testament.
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The Spirit of God, the Spirit of Yahweh mentioned all throughout the Old Testament.
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But we never see Him mentioned as a personal distinction from the Father until Jesus makes that distinction.
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Again, when He says, I will go away, and He will send you, another Comforter, one like me.
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Yeah, the plural pronouns that led us in our image.
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Absolutely.
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So that takes us through the Nicene Creed.
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There's a lot here to consider.
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I think the biggest concern that I would want you to sort of take away from this is the idea that this, when we talk about God, the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, one of the biggest mistakes people make, actually there are two.
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The two biggest mistakes people make is one, identifying the Father as being first in time.
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That was an issue that the Nicene Fathers or Nicene Council was trying to abolish.
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When you think Father came first, Son came second, Spirit came third, or whatever, that that's not the way God works because He's outside of time.
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You have to think Christ begotten but not made because we're not talking about time.
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And when we talk about the Spirit, you can talk about proceeding from but not from a specific point in time.
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So eliminate time from the conversation and that's the first issue is the issue of time.
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Yeah? Yeah.
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And so the first issue that I think the Nicene Creed was concerned about was the issue of time.
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And the second, which they didn't deal with much, but the next one we look at which will be the Athanasian Creed, they deal with at great length and that is the nature of Christ.
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Because time is first.
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Did He come at a point in time? No.
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He's always been.
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But the second is that He is God in the same way that God is God in the same authority that God the Father is God, God the Son is God, and God the Spirit is God.
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That's why it ends with that term worshipped and glorified when it talks about the Spirit.
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He's worshipped, He's glorified the same way Christ is, the same way the Father is.
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There's no distinction in their nature.
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And this is where I'll end tonight because we're out of time.
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The Greek argument was over the iota.
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The letter, the iota, sometimes called iota, but it's actually pronounced iota, and it's not Yoda like Star Wars, it's iota, iota.
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There was three words.
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Homoousia.
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Homoousia.
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Homoousia.
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Heterousia.
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Now, we know homo and hetero for probably a different reason.
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Hetero means different.
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Homo means same.
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Homoousia.
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Ousia means substance.
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This is weird.
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But one of the things that the Nicene Council had to deal with was what is God? God is not substance like we think of a substance, something that can be quantified or measured or weighed.
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God is not substance like the oil in your car or the water in your glass.
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But God is something.
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He is am.
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That's right.
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But He's Spirit.
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And there's something that is God.
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And we got to call it something because we got to make a distinction in this something.
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So we say that which He is is either the same as that which Christ is.
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It is similar to that which Christ is, and that's what adding the iota makes it similar.
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Homo is same.
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Homo is similar.
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Or He is different.
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Whatever God is in His being, Christ is either same, similar, or different.
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And this is the key to the Arian heresy is they don't say He's different.
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Nobody at Nicaea argued for this one.
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Nobody was arguing that Jesus was different than the Father.
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They were arguing that He was similar, but not the same.
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And that's the difference between orthodoxy and heresy.
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One, iota.
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Father, I thank You for this time to study.
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I pray that this has been helpful for Your people and that this would be used to encourage them to grow to love You more.
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In Christ's name, Amen.