THIS IS ETERNAL LIFE - TO KNOW GOD
05/09/23 08:04
Any identification of God as a construct, an abstraction or a pantheistic manifestation of nature is a blurring of who God is and a form of idolatry. Doctrinal perversions of God are serious not only as dishonouring God but because they distort our being and fill us with spiritual disease. Jesus’ healing of lepers was indicative of what He does to our spirituality when we agree with Him that He is our life and our way. Much of the who of God was, was worked out and established by the Church Fathers in the 4th Century.
NICENE CREED
Thomas Torrance observes that, “The Nicene doctrine of God was undoubtedly Hebraic in basic slant and character, clearly evident in its rejection of any conception of God so utterly transcendent that he cannot accommodate himself to natures other than his own, and does not interact with the world.
GOD’S STEPS TO US
“But it is also evident in its stress upon the oneness and holiness of God who intervenes in history for the salvation of mankind, and upon the Word of God mediated through the biblical revelation of the Old Testament as well as of the New Testament. In its developed theological form it was a Hebraeo-Christian soteriological conception of God that prevailed, governed by the decisive fact that in Jesus Christ God himself personally intervenes in the world working out the salvation of mankind.
SEE CHRIST SEE GOD
“Jesus Christ is none other than God the eternal Word and Son revealing himself to us and acting directly on our behalf within our human existence and life. Hence the Nicene theologians argued that, with the incarnate presence (Ivaapicoq napoixiia) of God among us, whatever is said and done by God is said and done exclusively from the Person of Christ. Here the Old Testament concepts of the Face and Word of God are so intensely personalised that to see and hear the Lord Jesus Christ is to see and hear God the Father himself face to face.”
DEVIOUS IDOLATRY
To equate God with the law or make Jesus subordinate to and an expression of the law is a serious heresy, given that the Trinity is God and that Jesus is the expression of that God. Healed views of God and the self are found in the Christ of God and our willingness to be His disciples who can be taught by Him and those who represent Him as He is. Bible reading and scripture citing is not much help when used to support a version of the Gospel that is not Christ, but another rendition of something offered by the Temple Money-Changers.
