Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: Athanasius Part 2

So what I want to do is draw out lessons from this. This is the part that I enjoy most. There isn't a lot of interesting detail to read about in Athanasius. I told you one interesting story. There are many of those.

But what is powerful are the implications of his life and the implications of the dispute compared to our day. And that's where I want to go. Now, I have seven of these seven lessons to learn. Number one.

Defending the Gospel Through the Deity of Christ

Defending and explaining doctrine. Is for the sake of the gospel, the gospel of Christ's glory and our everlasting joy. I changed the title from what was in the. Original brochure. I got that title because I didn't know I was going to run into this phrase he wrote in one of his letters.

Wherefore, considering that this struggle is for our all. Let us also make earnest care and aim to guard what we have received in that phrase, contending for our all. Gripped me. There was no fight here for ecclesiastical power going on.

There's no fight here, in his case, anyway, for theological triumph. This was a deeply religious crisis involving the reality of revelation and redemption. We are contending for our all. Everything is at stake.

And oh, how thankful we should be that Athanasius saw things so clearly. The incarnation and the deity of Christ has to do with the gospel. It has to do with salvation. It has to do with whether we have any hope or any life.

The creed that Athanasius helped draft. Embrace this sentence. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the son of God, begotten of the father, very God of very God, being of one substance with the father who.

For us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man, he suffered and the third day he rose again. There is no salvation if Jesus is not God. That's the lesson we should learn first, that this argument, this battle over the intricacies of homo ocean, is he really of one one?

Essence, one being with the father, or is it just like it is this hair splitting as Gibbon smeared that the empire almost split over an iota? As though there's no difference between the words yes and no, because they're both short.

You hear people talk like that today. It had to do with the gospel. And today it has to do with the gospel. That quote that you gave from Wainwright blew me away. I said, thank you, Jeffrey, for saying something so right.

Joyful Courage in Spiritual Conflict

Second lesson. Joyful courage is the calling of a faithful shepherd, joyful courage. That's you is the calling of a faithful shepherd. Athanasius stared down murderous intruders into his church. Athanasius stood before emperors who could have easily killed him as much as him away to treachery.

He risked the ire of parents because he recruited so many young virgins and so many young men into martyrdom. Because of their radical allegiance to the Nicene faith. Athanasius Contra Mundo should inspire every pastor to stand your ground meekly and humbly and courageously wherever biblical truth is at stake.

But.

You sure you get this word? You should out rejoice all of your adversaries. If something is worth fighting for, it's worth being happy about. It's worth rejoicing over. The joy is essential in the battle.

Nothing is worth fighting for that will not increase our joy in God forever. Our people need to see that. If you become sour in a battle, you're fighting the wrong battle, you got a battle at home on your knees to fight first before you go out and make cause for doctrinal orthodoxy.

Courage in conflict must mingle with joy in Christ. This is what Athanasius loved about Antony. I would like to give a whole message on Antony and Athanasius relationship to this desert father. He wrote a whole biography of Antony, it's in there, it's worth reading because you get the flavor of what the ideals of Athanasius were by reading the way he talks about Antony.

And here's one of those excerpts. Let us be courageous and rejoice always notice the linking courageous and rejoice. Let us be courageous and rejoice always. Let us consider and lay to heart that while the Lord is with us, our foes cannot do us harm.

But if they see us rejoicing in the Lord, contemplating the bliss of the future, mindful of the Lord, deeming all things in his hand, they are discomfited. And turned backwards. So, brothers. If there are times when you feel it is you contra mundum.

Stand courageous and out rejoice your adversaries. Third lesson. Loving Christ includes loving true propositions about Christ. What was clear to Athanasius was that propositions about Christ carried convictions that could send you to heaven or to hell.

There were propositions like. There was a time when the son of God was not there was a proposition like. He was not before he was made. Or the son of God is created. These propositions were strictly damnable if they were spread, if they were believed, they would damn the souls of those who embraced them.

And therefore, Athanasius labored with all his might in page after page after page to find propositions that would conform to ultimate reality and lead the soul to faith and worship and heaven. I believe that Athanasius would have abominated with tears and thinking Philippians three.

Three. Have I not told you before, say it with tears that their enemies of the cross is God is their belly. I think he would have abominated with tears the contemporary call for deep propositionalizing.

That you find among some reformists, the emerging church, younger evangelicals, post fundamentalists, post foundationalists, post propositionalists, post evangelicals. I think he would have said to them, our young people in Alexandria die for the truth of propositions about Christ.

What are your young people die for? And if the answer came back. We die for Christ, not propositions about Christ. I think Athanasius would have said, that's what area says. And which are you going to die for?

Athanasius would have been grieved over sentences like this one, it is Christ who unites us, it is doctrine that divides. Sentences like we should ask, whom do you trust rather than what do you believe?

He would have been grieved because he knew this was the very tactic used by the Aryan bishops to cover the councils with fog so that the word Christ could smuggle in anything. Those who talk like this, Christ unites, doctrine divides, have simply replaced a proposition with a word and they think they've done something profound.

And fresh when, in fact, they've done something old and stale and deadly, which leads now to lesson number four, the truth of biblical language. Must be vigorously protected with non-biblical language.

The truth of biblical language must be vigorously protected with non-biblical language. I did not expect to find this. In the fourth century. Athanasius experience, as I read him over the last six months, was critically illuminating to me in the battles that I see around me today, illuminating with regard especially to liberally minded Baptists and pietists, liberally minded, baptistic, pietistic traditions who say, well, let me put the conclusion like this.

The slogan, the Bible is our only creed, is often used as a cloak to conceal the fact. That Bible language simply carries Bible falsehood. But. You can use Bible language to say things that are false to the Bible, the Aryans were experts at this.

They affirmed every biblical sentence at Nicaea that could be brought forward, it was maddening to the Orthodox bishops.

Let me read it for you.

The Alexandrians confronted the Aryans as a quote. With the traditional scriptural phrases, which appeared to leave no doubt as to the eternal Godhead of the sun, but to their surprise, they were met with perfect acquiescence.

Only as each test was propounded, it was observed that the suspected party whispered and gesticulated to one another, evidently hinting that each could be safely accepted since it admitted of evasion.

If their ascent was asked to the formula like to the father in all things, it was given with reservation that man as such is the image and glory of God, the power of God elicited the whispered explanation that the host of Israel was spoken of as do not miss career and that even the locust and caterpillar are called the power of God.

The eternity of the sun was countered by the text. This is the most absolutely, staggeringly, unbelievably amazing with the text. We that live are all way period. Second Corinthians four to. And since we're all way to say that the sun is all way, doesn't make him any more than we.

This is the way the Bible Bible language was being handled. By the Aryans effect. Day after day, the issue of homo ocean was being forced. And it wasn't a biblical term. It just happened to be the only one available that would keep people from using biblical terms to say biblically false things.

RPC Hansen explained the process like this quote, Theologians of the Christian Church were slowly driven to the realization that the deepest questions which face Christianity cannot be answered in purely biblical language because the questions are about the meaning of biblical language itself.

The Aryans have seen this railed against unbiblical language, seized the biblical high ground as pietists and fundamentalists and biblical people who just want to say what the Bible says and not bring in external pinching, clarifying, defining words of precision.

In light, Athanasius saw through this postmodern, post conservative, post propositional strategy and save for us not just biblical words, but biblical truth. May God grant us the discernment of Athanasius for our day because very precious things are at stake.

Doctrinal Disagreement Does Not Prove Stalemate

Lesson number five, a widespread and long held doctrinal difference among Christians does not mean that the difference is insignificant or that we should not seek to persuade. Toward the truth and seek agreement.

If someone had said to Athanasius, Athanasius, people have disagreed over this issue for 300 years and there never has been any official position on this that the church has ever taken. Establishing one side is orthodox or the other.

So who do you think you are?

Half the bishops in the world disagree with you. It was more than half and they read the same Bible you do. So would you please stop fighting and making a ruckus and just learn to get along with diversity?

What if that had been said and we may thank God that Athanasius did not think that the amount of time that had elapsed or the number of Christians that disagreed defined how important the truth is or whether it should be fought for.

And so today we should not conclude that the absence of consensus in the church means doctrinal stalemate. God may yet be pleased to pour out a blessing of unity on some crucial area of doctrine not yet resolved.

I mean, picture yourself with Athanasius. There's no council to appeal to. Do you realize how much we lean on these councils? You wonder why is he doing this conference? Nobody's really worried about this anymore.

This is done. They finished this 381 finish.

It's over.

And we do lean on them. Thank God those people fought, but they had nothing to lean on. They had to decide, is this biblical? Is this central?

Is this gospel?

And we'll fight for it. And it makes me wonder today there was no yet papacy. There was nobody to say, get the council together just happened to be the emperor. It makes me wonder, since there was no papacy, since Bishop Briggs were at war with each other all over the world and they pulled off something like a world council with 318 people spontaneously with a little bit of help from the emperor.

It just makes me wonder whether there might happen something like that. I see the eyes, the closest thing I can think of in evangelicalism, international council and biblical inerrancy. That was an amazing thing back in the 70s that did a great work for the church in stating in a Chicago statement something about the nature of inerrancy, and though it had no official, you know, big, overarching ecclesiastical thing on it.

Thousands of us benefited from that collective wisdom, might there not be a day in which God would be pleased to take some issues and make that happen? I think of manhood and womanhood issues. I think of justification by faith issues.

I think of the nature of how Christ saved sinners, atonement issues. I think of sovereignty of grace in conversion issues. And I'm simply not going to say stalemate. Two thousand years hasn't done anything about this, so it won't happen.

Who do you think you are to say it won't happen? Put yourself in athanasia shoes, knowing that the whole world was Aryan almost here we are sitting in this room, many of us loving the same glorious doctrine.

Athanasius couldn't have begun to pull together a group like this on the side of orthodoxy. They didn't exist. There weren't that many bishops who believed in the deity of Christ. So lesson number five is do not use length of time elapsed or number of Christians disagreeing to say stalemate on any issue.

That's biblical and important. Number six, lesson number six, I have two more don't aim to preach only in categories of thought that can be readily understood by this generation. Aim at creating biblical categories of thought that are not present.

There's a key word in that I don't want you to miss the word only don't aim to preach only. In categories of thought that can be readily understood by this generation, aim at creating biblical categories of thought that are not present.

Here's another way to say that, and I benefited so much from Andrew Walls, his books on missions, and he has a cluster of ideas that have really brought. Light, at least to an issue, if not all the solutions to the issue, and the two clusters are the pilgrim principle and the indigenous principle of the church, the pilgrim principle says.

Do not be conformed to this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, you've got to make new minds. And the indigenous principle says, I have become all things to all people that by all means, I may save some, those two principles do not fit together easily.

It's one of the reasons why there are worship wars and missy illogical controversies and church planting controversies and church structure controversies, because the counterculture and the accommodation culture principles do not mesh easily.

Some what I'm pleading for is that you not sell out to the indigenous principle, but that you bring the pilgrim principle to bear powerfully some of the most crucial, precious truths of the scripture are counterintuitive to the fall in human mind.

They don't fit our heads. The orthodox understanding of the Trinity is surely one of these, if the indigenous principle had triumphed in the fourth century, we would all be Aryan because it's far easier for the human mind to say that the son, like all other sons, once was not and came into being than it is for the human mind to say.

The son has always been there with God and there's only one God, but the Bible will not let its message fit into the categories we bring with our fallen finite minds. The Bible is relentlessly pressing on our brains to create new categories of thought to fit the mysteries of the gospel.

That's what preaching is. You're a wimp if you sell out to the accommodation culture, inculturation principle. That's easy, easy to grow a church that way. Archibald Roberts points out with the conversion of Constantine and the Edict of Milan in three thirteen.

That gave legal status to Christianity is a quote, the inevitable influx of heathen into the church now that the empire had become Christian, brought with it multitudes to whom Aryanism was a more intelligible creed than that of Nicaea.

So if your front end preaching is all accommodation, you'll fill your church with people who don't have new minds and the pressure to shape those doctrines to fit those people will be almost insuperable over time.

Rather, I say alongside the biblical underline that the biblical principle of accommodation and contextualization, Athanasius would plead with us to have a deep commitment to the Pilgrim principle of confrontation and transformation and brain boggling, mind altering, recategorization of the way people think about reality.

That's the hard work of preaching. Easy to tell those stories and put everything in categories of the people already like that's easy, takes no effort at all, but oh, to state the glorious gospel in such a way that it explodes their categories and holds on to them so that they know the best thing in the world is happening to them.

That's a challenge.