The Athanasian Creed

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All right, we are coming tonight to our sixth lesson.
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I think your lesson may say five on the sheet, but that is a typographical error.
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It should say lesson six, because last week the Council of Chalcedon was lesson five.
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We are on lesson six, and we're going to be looking at the Athanasian Creed.
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Interestingly enough, it was this creed which caused me to have the desire to start this series.
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Weeks ago, I guess it's been a few months ago now, my wife and I were having a conversation about a conversation that she had had with a Jehovah's Witness.
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Someone had, I think, stopped her in a store or something and given her, maybe it was a Watchtower or one of their Awake, is there other magazine, if you ever see the magazine called Awake, that is also the Jehovah's Witness periodical which goes out.
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If you ever have somebody come to your door and they're trying to give you a Watchtower or an Awake magazine, you'll know who they are.
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And somebody had stopped my wife and asked her a question about her faith.
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And Jennifer responded and said something about the Trinity, because we know that the Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in the Trinity.
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And in the midst of that, the lady responded to her with a question which demonstrated that she did not even understand what the Trinity is.
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She didn't even understand what it means when we say that we believe that God is a Trinity, one in essence and three in persons.
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Her very question was one of ignorance.
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And so that inspired me.
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I said, you know what, Jennifer? I said, I want you and the kids to really understand what we mean when we say Trinity.
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I said, so you know what we're going to do? We're going to look at the Athanasian Creed.
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This was in my house.
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I pulled out the Athanasian Creed.
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I said, this is probably the most all encompassing and yet succinct expression of the doctrine of the Trinity that's been written outside of sacred scripture.
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And I went through it with her and with the kids.
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It was a wonderful time of family worship.
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And I remember my wife just saying, wow, to read it and to see how full of an expression it was.
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And that's what made me say, you know what, these creeds are really a blessing to the church.
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They are built on men who have really dedicated themselves to understanding God and his word.
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And that's what made me want to start this lesson, this series.
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And so tonight we are going to continue our series.
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We've already looked at church history at a glance.
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We've already looked at the creeds that we find in the scripture.
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We've looked at a couple of the earliest documents, the Didache and of course, the Apostles Creed, which we don't know the date of that.
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But there's good reason to believe that it's a fairly early document.
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We've looked at the Nicene Creed from 325 and we've looked at the Confession of Chalcedon, which was 8051.
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And tonight we're going to look at the Athanasian Creed and also we're going to look at the person of Athanasius himself, because to understand the creed is part to understand who Athanasius was and why he why this creed is based on his teachings.
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So let's first begin with the life and death of Athanasius.
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There is a story about the early life of Athanasius, which tells us a bit about his zeal, which started at a very young age.
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Alexander was the bishop of Alexandria and Alexander one day was gazing out his window and he noticed some young boys who were playing down by the water.
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When he looked out and saw these young boys playing down by the water, that wasn't unusual.
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It was very common that boys would play.
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But what was unusual was one of the boys was baptizing the other boys.
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That was quite unusual.
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So Alexander, being the bishop, was concerned because he felt like this was sort of a sacrilege.
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This was an act of impropriety in regard to the church and behavior.
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So he went down to correct the boys.
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And as he went down to correct the boys, the one who was organizing the group was a young man named Athanasius.
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The bishop inquired, Alexander inquired, what are you doing? And he said that he was pretending that he was a bishop and that he was treating the other boys as his catechumens.
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You remember a catechumen is one who is being prepared for baptism.
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So he says, I'm the bishop.
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They're the ones that are being baptized.
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And what began as a rebuke against Athanasius turned into a endearing relationship between Alexander, the older man and this young man, Athanasius.
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And Athanasius' parents agreed that Alexander could take him under his wing.
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And that the two could begin ministering together.
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And at the age of 23, a few years later, Athanasius was ordained as Alexander's deacon.
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So he was ordained as a servant in the church, one who would directly be the in service to the bishop.
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He was his his basically his secretary, right hand man, his helper, his deacon.
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Now, a few weeks ago when we studied the Nicene Creed in the Council of Nicaea, we noted during that study that Athanasius, along with Alexander, was instrumental in the events which occurred at Nicaea.
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Following Nicaea in AD 328, you remember Nicaea was in 325.
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Well, three years later, Athanasius was elected to succeed Alexander as the bishop of Alexandria.
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So Alexander was the bishop during Nicaea.
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But three years later, Athanasius takes his place as the bishop of Alexandria.
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His episcopate, his bishop position lasted for 45 years.
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That's a note on your sheet there.
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He he lasted as a bishop for 45 years, but his ministry was not an easy one.
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Seventeen of those 45 years of ministry, he was in exile as a result of his battles regarding doctrines.
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So 17 of 45, almost half, he was spent in exile.
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As we noted last week, there is a famous quote from this time period.
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The quote is contra mundum, and it is sometimes said Athanasius contra mundum.
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Contra mundum means against the world.
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Athanasius against the world.
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As I mentioned, I think last week once it was said to Athanasius, Athanasius, the whole world is against you.
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And he said then Athanasius is against the world.
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He was firm in his convictions and he stood for the truth.
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He was exiled.
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This is the next blank on your sheet.
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He was exiled five times by different Roman emperors.
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He was exiled five times.
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That's the 17 years that might have been what y'all thought was the blank there.
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It was 17 years.
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But it is a combination of five different exiles.
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I'll give you those exiles now.
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You don't necessarily have to write this down, but just to kind of give you how it worked out.
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He was exiled once by the Emperor Constantine for two and a half years.
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He was exiled again under Constantine's son Constantius twice, once for seven and a half years and once for six years.
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He was exiled under the Emperor Julian.
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By the way, his name was Julian the Apostate.
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If that gives you an idea of the type of character he was, an apostate is one who has departed from the faith.
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He was called Julian the Apostate.
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Emperor Julian exiled Athanasius for about 10 months, and he was also exiled by the Emperor Valens for four months.
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So we have a extended period of time here.
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And all of these exiles were as a result of different people bringing in different doctrines and Athanasius being considered a contentious person.
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They pushed him away.
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Yes, ma'am.
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Most of the exiles.
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And I'm going to have to I'm answering you this because I think I understand what you're saying.
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You're saying was he exiled for a partial amount of time and then could come back? He came back when a new emperor would come in.
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Yeah.
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And so, yeah, I would have to look into seeing whether it was a specific amount of time.
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I think the exile was a was a excommunication.
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It was a putting out.
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So it would be a forever thing.
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But again, when when politics change and when leaders change, certain things change.
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And he gets this opportunity to kind of eke his way back in.
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And then, of course, when the when things get bad again, he gets pushed out again.
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So an exile would have been a would have been a lifetime out.
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But for because of political changes and shifts in leadership and things, he was able to come back and then get pushed out again.
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Athanasius was accused of many things from defiling the altar to selling church grain for his own personal gain, to engaging with prostitutes, to even violence and murder, to suppress dissenters.
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He was accused of a lot.
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But I want to share with you two stories from the life of Athanasius that really set the stage for what kind of opposition he had and also the way he responded to his opposition.
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The first one was during the exile under Emperor Constantine, his first exile.
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His opponents are trying to find anything they can to bring against him.
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So they trumped up charges against Athanasius.
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One of the charges they trumped up against him was that he had beaten and raped a woman.
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And they brought this woman in to say that she had been beaten and that she had been raped.
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And she was and she was making such a to do.
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I've been I've been injured by this man, Athanasius.
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Athanasius is in the courtroom.
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So is Timotheus, Athanasius' friend.
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And Timotheus steps forward during the court.
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And he says, am I the one who came into your house? And she says, yes, you are the one.
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And everyone knew she was lying because she had never met Athanasius.
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She didn't know who he was.
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So when Timotheus steps forward and says, was it I? Yes, it was you.
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And everyone, of course, and they say that she was pulled out of the court kicking and screaming because they were all so embarrassed, those who had accused and set her up.
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She was a known prostitute.
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And those who had used her realized that the jig was up.
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It was also during that same trial that Athanasius was accused of murder.
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And here's what was interesting about the accusation.
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They said not only was Athanasius a murderer, but he was so evil that he actually cut the hand off of Arsenius.
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That was I remember his name.
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I think of Arsenio Hall.
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I don't know why.
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Arsenius was the one who he was supposed to have murdered.
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And they said that he was so evil that he had cut off his hand and embalmed his hand so as to have a trophy of his murder.
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So Athanasius, knowing that this accusation was being brought, brought Arsenius with him, the one who had been accused of killing.
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And when they pulled out the embalmed hand, because they had apparently taken a cadaver, a bombed hand and used it to say this is the hand of the dead Arsenius, they brought in the real Arsenius and he showed that he still had both hands.
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It's so much drama in the early church.
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I mean, you couldn't write with the level of interest that these stories have.
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And, you know, these people who tried to bring accusations against Athanasius, they failed time and time again.
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But as political leaders often do, just like we know with Pontius Pilate and the death of Jesus Christ on the in the crucifixion, political leaders are often more concerned with expediency than they are with justice.
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So why do we see Athanasius being exiled? Because it was the politically expedient thing to do.
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You know what Constantine finally got him on in that first court? It was making sure I say this correctly.
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Basically, he accused him of preventing corn from being exported from Alexandria.
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That was what they finally got him on, the preventing of corn from being exported from Alexandria.
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And so they caught him red handed.
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And for that, he was exiled.
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These are just a few of the incidences that we see wherein we can truly say it was Athanasius against the world.
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Yet even with all the controversy surrounding his life and ministry, Athanasius left an indelible mark on the Christian church.
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He stood for truth when so many others faltered.
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In that he is an example to us of Christian fortitude and commitment.
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In 366, he was able to resume his position as bishop for the last time, holding it until his death at the age of 78.
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C.S.
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Lewis, many of you are familiar with Chronicles of Narnia, Lion, Witch and Wardrobe.
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C.S.
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Lewis, very famous Christian author, had this to say of Athanasius.
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And I quote, he stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, whole and undefiled when it looked as if all the civilized world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius, into one of those sensible, synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which then is now included among their devotees, many highly cultivated clergymen.
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It is his glory that he did.
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Not move with the time.
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It's a beautiful thought that, you know, it was his glory that he did not bend to the whims of even those men among him who would have been considered the elite and he stood for the truth.
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So that is just a short rendition of some of the life of Athanasius.
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Certainly we can't go through everything in such a short lesson, but it gives us reason to understand why he is certainly a man used by God to do many wonderful and powerful things.
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I want to explain to you now what is the next thing on your list, and that is the thirty ninth festal letter, the thirty ninth festal letter.
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Some believe the most influential of the writings of Athanasius to be his thirty ninth festal letter, which was for an eighty three sixty seven, eighty three sixty seven.
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It was customary that after the epiphany every year, the epiphany is the festival that's held 12 days after Christmas.
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So after the epiphany, the bishop of Alexandria would write a letter and in that letter he would fix the dates for Lent.
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Remember, the Lent is the celebration of that time of fasting and holding back of some type of spiritual discipline.
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And then the resurrection Sunday.
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So in this letter, he was basically setting the Christians worship calendar for the year, setting out when these things were going to be and when they were going to be celebrated.
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What made the thirty ninth festal letter so important was that Athanasius included within it a listing of books.
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It was a listing of the New Testament.
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It is the first official document within the church that lists the twenty seven books that we still use today that we call the New Testament.
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And it coincides perfectly Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans and so on as the same with ours.
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As a result, many people look to the thirty ninth festal letter as the first authoritative statement on the canon of the New Testament.
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Athanasius states, and I quote, In these twenty seven writings alone, the teaching of godliness is proclaimed.
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No one may add to them and nothing may be taken from them.
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End quote.
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This is a huge moment in the church.
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This is not to say, however, that this is the first time the church had recognized these books as authoritative.
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Please don't think that that's what I'm saying.
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The church had long understood the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to have come from the time of the apostles.
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They had long understood the books of of Paul.
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The Pauline Corpus is actually the very first grouping of books that was sent out to the churches.
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You have the books of Paul together, one of the earliest groupings of books that was sent out into the church.
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Yes, sir.
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The order that they're in, the order that they're in is, I guess, would have to be attributed to Athanasius because the same order that we still continue to use.
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But if you think of there is a there is a specific order that they come in, you have the gospels, you have the history and then you have the Pauline epistles and then you have the general epistles and then the apocalyptic work, which is the book of John.
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So it makes sense as far as chronologically and how they fit together.
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And I believe that that's the same way it is in the festival letter.
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Now, I want to make mention of something.
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In your notes, I'm going to give you to your two blanks right now, it is important to understand and to note that the church recognizing the canon.
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Is not the same thing as the church creating the canon, what is the canon? When I say that word, what is the canon? Well, canon means law or governing rod, but when I say canon, when it refers to the Bible, we're talking about the listing of books, the measuring rod, the listing of books that we that we say are God's word.
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So, yes, you're right.
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It is it's the law or a measuring rod.
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And when we talk about the canon of Scripture, I should make that more specific.
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The canon of Scripture is the listing of books.
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The church does not create canon, the church recognizes canon.
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Here's what I mean by that, because this is such an important thing, because if you hear the Roman Catholics, they will tell you that the church.
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Authorized these books, who has the power in that, in that the church, the church has the has the authority, and that's why within Roman Catholicism there is a dual authority, the authority of the word and the authority of the church.
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And the church has equal authority to the word, which is why the pope is considered to be the infallible vicar of Christ.
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He is the one who sits in the place of Peter.
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He is the continued leader of the church and he has that same authority.
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Beloved, what you must understand is that the books that we have in the Bible.
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They, yes, were recognized by the church, but by recognizing them, we don't make them God's word just by recognizing that something's God's word.
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If I looked at the Koran and I said, hey, I think that's God's word, would that make it God's word? If an entire church looked at the Koran and said, we believe this is God's word, would that make it God's word? If the entire church.
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If an entire church, one church, one local church, a sovereign grace family church looked at the writings of, oh, let's say, I don't know, I'm trying to think of some modern guy.
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I'm trying to be nice and not pick somebody really bad.
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Let's say we all pay.
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Let's say we all picked up John MacArthur's book, which is a good book.
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We'll say any one of his books, you know, one perfect life.
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John MacArthur, great book, picked up that book and we said, this is God's word.
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Would that make it God's word? No.
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And that's my point.
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The church doesn't have that power to create canon.
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We don't have the power to create the word of God.
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All we can do is recognize it.
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And when you think about the New Testament books, how did they become recognized as having authority, as having been inspired by God? How did they become recognized? Well, there were certain parameters that the church looked at to ensure that these things were, in fact, true.
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For instance, the books of the New Testament all have what we call apostolic authority.
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The books of the New Testament all were written during the time of the apostles and thus would have been recognized by the apostles.
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One of the most interesting passages of scripture comes to us in the books of Peter, wherein he talks about Paul's writings and he says that they are scripture.
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He affirms for us that Paul's writings are scripture.
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That's an amazing truth because that shows one apostle who we trust, Peter, is affirming the writings of another apostle, Paul, as being the word of God.
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So therein we have this understanding of authority from the books themselves.
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Why don't we believe the gospel of Mary Magdalene should be in the Bible? Because it was written in the late, much later than it could ever have been authorized or taught or preached by the apostles.
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It certainly has no way to have any type of apostolic authority.
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We don't believe in the gospel of Philip or the gospel of Judas Iscariot.
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Not only are these Gnostic works, but they are also far too late.
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To receive the authority of the apostles.
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So my point to simply say this, just because Athanasius writes a list of books doesn't make him authoritative, but what it does show is at this point in history, the church was concerned about which books were recognized by the church and which ones weren't.
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So he makes it a point in this 39th Festal Letter to put these books down and say these are the ones that the church universal.
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Remember, that's what the word Catholic means, that the church universal has received these books as being having apostolic authority, not that they were all written by apostles.
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Mark was not an apostle.
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Mark is writing from the authority of Peter, though.
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That's another that's something to consider.
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James is the brother of Jesus, but he's writing under apostolic authority.
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These are all important things.
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But anyhow, like I said, I'm getting a little off track, but I'm just wanting to point out the fact that this 39th Festal Letter was simply it was Athanasius affirming what the church already believed.
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But it was saying we this is where we stand is taking a stand.
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That's Athanasius his whole life.
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And that's why he said we're not going to add anything, we're going to take anything away.
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This is God's word to us.
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And we continue to this day to believe that he was correct.
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All right, now let's move on to the Athanasian Creed, the Athanasian Creed.
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When we use the term Athanasian Creed, the assumption is that it was written by Athanasius.
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However, some people do not believe that he was the author.
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Some people do, some people don't.
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There is no way to know for sure.
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However, no one disputes that this creed is based on his teachings.
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All right, that's the thing, whether or not he wrote it or not is really a side issue we could debate, you know, because, you know, there are some debate as to whether or not he wrote it.
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I tend to think that he didn't, because some of what's in it seems to really be focused on debates that came after he died.
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You know, you have debates that come up after he died, and this sort of addresses some of those debates, but it bears his name because it bears his theology.
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It bears the theology that Athanasius stood for throughout his life, and that's worthy of his name.
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So we call it the Athanasian Creed because it bears his theology.
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And that's what the next that's what it says in your sheet, the one that you already have the blank there says theology says in either case, the creed which bears the name of Athanasius does also bear the testimony of his theology to agree with it is to agree with him.
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It is also considered this isn't in your notes, but it might be something that you want to make a little note of.
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It is considered to be the third ecumenical creed, the third ecumenical creed.
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What is the word ecumenical mean worldwide or universally accepted? The other two, the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed.
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And then, of course, the Athanasian Creed.
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Those are the three which are generally accepted throughout the whole of Christendom, whatever church that calls itself a Christian church would be able to affirm Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed.
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It can be divided into two sections, lines one through twenty eight, regard the doctrine of the Trinity lines one through eight is the Trinity.
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And then after that lines twenty nine to forty four is directly related to Christology.
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Remember, I mentioned a few weeks ago, my wife and family, we sat down and read this.
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I'm going to do with you guys pretty much the same as I did with them.
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We're going to read it.
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I want you to hear.
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The creed, I'm going to put it on the screen for you to read along with me silently, just listen and read as I read it aloud.
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Whoever wants to be saved should above all cling to the Catholic faith.
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Remember, Catholic simply means universal doesn't mean Roman Catholic, as some might assume.
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So those who want to be saved should all cling to the Catholic faith.
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Whoever does not guard it whole and inviolable will doubtless perish, doubtless perish eternally.
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Now, this is the Catholic faith.
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This is it.
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We worship one God in Trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor the nor dividing the divine being.
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For the father is one person, the son is another and the spirit is still another.
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But the deity of the father, son and Holy Spirit is one equal in glory, co-eternal in majesty.
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What the father is, the son is, and so is the Holy Spirit uncreated as the father, uncreated is the son, uncreated is the spirit.
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The father is infinite.
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The son is infinite.
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The Holy Spirit is infinite.
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Eternal is the father, eternal is the son, eternal is the spirit.
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And yet there are not three eternal beings, but one who is eternal.
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As there are not three uncreated and unlimited beings, but one who is uncreated and unlimited.
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Almighty is the father, almighty is the son, almighty is the spirit.
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And yet there are not three almighty beings, but one who is almighty.
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Thus, the father is God, the son is God, the Holy Spirit is God.
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And yet there are not three gods, but one God.
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Thus, the father is Lord, the son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord.
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And yet there are not three lords, but one Lord.
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As Christian truth compels us to acknowledge each distinct person as God and Lord, so Catholic religion forbids us to say that there are three gods or lords.
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The father was neither made nor created nor begotten.
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The son was neither made nor created, but was alone begotten of the father.
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The spirit was neither made nor created, but is proceeding from the father and the son.
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Thus, there is one father, not three fathers, one son, not three sons, one Holy Spirit, not three spirits.
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And in this trinity, no one is before or after greater or less than the other.
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But all three persons are in themselves co-eternal and co-equal.
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And so we must worship the trinity in unity and the one God in three persons.
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Whoever wants to be saved should think thus about the trinity that ends the portion on the trinity.
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Now he moves to Christology.
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It is necessary for eternal salvation that one also faithfully believe that our Lord Jesus Christ became flesh for this is the true faith that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, God's son, is both God and man.
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He is God begotten before all worlds from the being of the father, and he is man born in the world from the being of his mother, existing fully as God and fully as man with a rational soul in a human body equal to the father in divinity, subordinate to the father in humanity.
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Although he is God and man, he is not divided, but is one Christ.
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He is united because God has taken humanity into himself.
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He does not transform deity into humanity.
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He is completely one in the unity of his person without confusing his natures.
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For as the rational soul and body are one person, so the one Christ is God and man.
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He suffered death for our salvation.
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He descended into hell and rose again from the dead.
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He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father.
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He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
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At his coming, all people shall rise bodily to give an account of their own deeds.
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Those who have done good will enter eternal life.
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Those who have done evil will enter eternal fire.
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This is the Catholic faith.
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One cannot be saved without believing this firmly and faithfully.
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And that ends the creed and one word comes to mind when I read that creed.
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And that is the word thorough.
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It is very thorough, and that's on your notes, if you want to make note of that.
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This creed goes to great lengths to ensure what people should believe and what they should not believe in regard to the Trinity.
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It may seem repetitious, but it is intended to leave no issue unanswered.
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In regard to the full deity of Christ and the full unity within the Trinity.
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This creed also makes the bold statement that one cannot be saved without believing this firmly and faithfully.
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This claim of exclusivity might seem difficult to accept since the creed itself contains so much that is really beyond the mind of humanity.
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It's beyond our mind to comprehend some of these things.
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Yet we must understand the reasoning for this language of exclusivity.
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This is a time in history where there was much division in the church regarding true and right doctrine.
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Beloved, we still live in a time where there's much division regarding true and right doctrine.
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But this is a time where there were heretics in the world who were going about teaching falsely in regard to Christ.
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Wait a minute.
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We still live in a time where there are heretics that are going about.
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We it was a time much like today when a stand for truth had to be a firm stand.
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Yes, well, I would argue that, as I've said from the beginning, no creed is perfect.
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I the purpose of this creed in dealing with the person of Christ and the person of the relationship within the Godhead, I think it's very well done.
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I do think there's issues at the end wherein someone could read in two things.
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I think, one, I see what you're saying about potentially maybe some type of a soul sleep, psychokinesia or even purgatory.
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But I also could possibly read in the potential of workspace righteousness, which is also an issue within the Roman Catholic communion.
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So what I would argue is twofold.
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One, this is the intent of this particular creed is not to make the point in regard to sociology.
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It's regarding Trinitarianism, theology, proper Trinitarianism, those things.
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So in that regard, yes, I think that there could be misunderstanding of it.
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Well, actually, well, what we're going to see next week is the Council of Orange.
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Yes, they refine these things in the Council of Orange is where they're sort of bringing together the finality of the Augustinian Pelagian debate over the nature of man and the nature of salvation.
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So, yes, that is not the primary focus of this creed.
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But I could see how someone could misunderstand it and read into it workspace salvation.
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One of the things that I want to point out, though, in regard to this statement, we know that works do not save us.
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However, when you hear the phrase, those who do good will go to eternal life and those who do evil will go to eternal death.
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It sounds like workspace righteousness.
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But what you must understand that would have been a foundational understanding for these men is that the only people who can do good are the people who have come to faith in Christ.
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It is impossible for someone who is outside of Christ to do any good.
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Why? Because the Bible says, apart from faith, it is impossible to please God.
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The unbeliever does not do anything but sin all the time, even in his best deeds.
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The Bible says his righteousnesses are as filthy rags before God.
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The unbeliever does no good to people who say, oh, I know this guy doesn't believe in Jesus, but he's a really good guy.
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No, he is not socially.
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He may be a good person, but in the eyes of God, he is a reprobate.
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In the eyes of God, he is a wretch.
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In the eyes of God, if he does not repent of his sins, he will go to eternal fire as a result of his sins.
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He is not a good person.
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That's the hard truth.
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But the truth of Scripture, there is none good.
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No, not one.
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There is none who understands.
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There is none who seeks after God.
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And so to call anyone good is to make the assumption that that person has come to faith.
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Because without faith, you cannot do any good before God.
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So that is an important statement.
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So I would say, yes, the good go to heaven, because the only people who can do any good are those who do that good in Christ.
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So I would say, yes, I could see where it could be confusing, but I can also see how a person who had a understanding of salvation could affirm that.
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So I think it's one of those things where certainly there there could be.
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But this is not a well-refined, sociological document.
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It's not focused on salvation as much as it's focused on the nature of Christ and the nature of of God.
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All right.
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Let me get back to where we were here in our notes, because I want to finish up.
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When we look at any document like this, when we look at any creed, we have to remember that it's always subordinate to Scripture.
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Everything in the creeds, everything in the confessions.
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You know, last night, the elders, we were talking about the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith because a beautiful document.
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It's very well written.
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It helps explain the truths of God's word in a very succinct way.
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But it's not the Bible.
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It can air.
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The creeds can air.
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They are all based on Scripture, but they are meant to be tools for teaching.
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They are meant to be tools for the church learning.
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And like you said, I like the word refined as we have come down through the centuries.
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We've been through the Reformation.
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We've been through the Great Awakenings.
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We've been through the creeds and confessions of the ancient church.
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We've been through this.
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And it's been as a refinement for our understanding.
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One of the oldest graphics that was associated with this teaching is this.
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I didn't print it for you and I don't imagine you might want to try to draw it.
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I'd be happy to print you a copy.
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But this is the Trinitarian shield.
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And it's often often used as a as a simplified version of what was taught by Athanasius.
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And of course, what is the biblical teaching on the Trinity? This is the Latin version.
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There is an English version.
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Potter being father, Phileas is son, Spiritus Sanctus is the Holy Spirit.
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So it says the father, Odeus, is God.
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And that's the center.
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And est is is.
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So we say the father is God, the son is God, the Holy Spirit is God.
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But non est, the Holy Spirit is not the son.
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And the son is not the father.
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And the father is neither the son nor the Holy Spirit.
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There are three persons, but one being.
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I've always thought that this was a very helpful graphic, though it is not perfect and though, you know, someone might could take and punch holes in it to simply define what we have been trying to define the nature of the father, the son and the spirit.
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Trinity and unity and unity and Trinity, I think this is helpful.
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And again, in English, it's father, son, spirit in the middle is God.
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All right.
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Let us now come to a conclusion.
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Years ago, I had an opportunity to sit on a board of men to ordain a man to the gospel ministry.
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He had invited me, the man being ordained, had invited me to come and sit on the board.
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So, too, had the president of the seminary where I was attending invited me to come.
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So I thought it was very nice.
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I didn't understand what they really wanted me to do, except they said, come and ask questions.
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And when you leave that much room for me, some wonderful jokes are going to happen, some wonderful things, because I was when I say jokes, I don't mean like ha ha jokes.
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I mean, it's just the jokes on you when you ask you say you're going to ask me.
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Let me ask questions.
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When we sat down with a room full of men, there was probably 10 of us, the man who was being questioned was there and the rest of us sitting around the table.
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There were questions that came up.
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First one, interestingly enough, was about predestination.
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I disagreed with the answer and I disagreed with the question because the question demonstrated a lack of understanding about the issue in total.
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But that is not about what we're talking about tonight.
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But I wanted to answer.
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But of course, I wasn't there to answer questions.
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I was there to ask questions.
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So I let my turn come.
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In the midst of this, I was listening to these other men ask questions and I felt like he got a couple of good questions.
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He got a couple of softballs, but that's fair.
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Everybody deserves to be able to knock one or two out of the park.
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And when it came to my turn, I was thinking, what is a good question that a pastor, a man who is about to enter into the pastoral ministry, what is a good question? That he should be able to answer.
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Not giving him a softball, but giving him something that he should know.
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My question was this.
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I said, brother, I want to paint you a picture of the scenario.
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I want you to imagine that I am coming from a Jehovah Witness church.
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I just married a woman in your church.
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She wants me to come to church here.
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I've grown up my whole life.
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Being taught the theology of the Jehovah Witnesses, that God is not the Trinity, that Christ is not divine, that the Holy Spirit is not a personal person within the Godhead.
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I said, tell me.
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On what scriptural authority would you explain to me the doctrine of the Trinity? And crickets, it was silence.
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The man answering the questions sat stone faced and the man, one of the deacons who was there to my right, turned to me and said, nobody could answer that question.
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It's just too hard.
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And I said, I said, sir, this is foundational Christian truth.
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Well, no one understands the Trinity.
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Beloved, the first four to 500 years of the church were spent in battles because men understood the Trinity.
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They understood what they were saying and what they were not saying, and they were willing to battle those who did not agree with what the word said about the nature of the son and the spirit and of the father.
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How can we not know? How to answer such a foundational.
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Question, beloved, if our Christian forefathers like Athanasius took the time to think through and lay out the the beliefs about these foundational doctrines of the faith, should not we also invest ourselves mentally in understanding them as well? We cannot and must not succumb to the dumbing down of our faith.
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Rather, instead, we ought to be inspired by men like Athanasius who know.
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Who knew what he believed and he was able to properly articulate it.
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So, too, should we let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this opportunity to have examined this creed and to examined it in light of its historical context.
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We thank you for the man Athanasius and all that he meant to the church at this time in history.
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As we move forward in the weeks to come to see other creeds and other confessions and other historical documents, help us to understand the value of what it is we're learning and why these things are so precious and why the men of God should know these things.
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That we might be able to articulate what it is we believe and why we believe in Jesus name, we pray and for his sake, amen.