If you’ve read the Da Vinci Code or listened to Skeptics and Muslims giving objections to the Christian faith, one argument that you might hear is that doctrines such as the deity of Christ and the Holy Trinity were completely foreign to the New Testament Church and was an invention of Nicea. As an example of how this argument is frequently employed, a certain booklet published by the Islamic Circle of North America contains the following statement in one of its notes:
It was in the ancient city of Nicea (which was located in modern-day Turkey approximately 700 miles or 1100 km NNW of Jerusalem near the eastern Roman capitol) that the First Council of Nicea convened, 325 years after the birth of Jesus. It was at this council that Jesus was declared by the majority of the council members to be divine rather than God’s Prophet and Messenger. The concept of the trinity was established by declaring that Jesus was the same as and equal to God. This is in direct opposition to the Abrahamic principles of monotheism, which Jesus himself called people to and affirmed.[1]
In addition, one can find the following on one of the pamphlets that they often distribute:
With their teacher gone, the devoted followers of Jesus tried to maintain the purity and simplicity of his teachings. But they were soon besieged and overtaken by a flood of Roman and Greek influences, which eventually so buried and distorted the message of Jesus that only a little of its truth now remains. Strange doctrines of Jesus being a man-god, of God dying, of saint worship and of God being made up of different parts came into vogue and were accepted by many of those who took the name “Christians” centuries after Jesus. [2]
Of course, all of this is a misrepresentation of what Christians actually believe, not to mention of the history of the faith. The New Testament provides a wealth of evidence that the followers of Jesus believed He was God from very early on, as can be seen in John 1:1-18, John 20:27-29, Romans 9:5, Colossians 2:9, Titus 2:13, 2 Peter 1:1, Hebrews 1:6-12 and 1 John 5:20. These scripture passages are well-attested not only in the earliest and best manuscripts of the New Testament that we have today, but also in the citations of them by th early church fathers. Now, undoubtedly there are those who will try to skirt around the obvious by attempting to explain away these passages. Their explanations cannot stand without twisting the scriptures, but that will be for another time.
There is also the testimony of the Apostolic and Ante-Nicene fathers, who lived during the first two centuries after Christ walked upon this earth. The Trinitarian formula is clearly present in the writings of Saint Clement of Rome. Ignatius of Antioch frequently refers to Jesus as God in his epistles. The anonymous second century epistle known as 2nd Clement states that “we ought so to think of our Lord Jesus Christ as of God, [and] as of the judge of quick and dead…”[3]. But I believe that the clearest testimony comes from Melito of Sardis, who identifies Christ as God who made the heavens and the earth. This is clear from his Paschal homily, where he writes:
The one who hung the earth in space, is himself hanged; the one who fixed the heavens in place, is himself impaled; the one who firmly fixed all things, is himself firmly fixed to the tree. The Lord is insulted, God has been murdered, the King of Israel has been destroyed by the right hand of Israel.
This is the one who made the heavens and the earth, and who in the beginning created man, who was proclaimed through the law and prophets, who became human via the virgin, who was hanged upon a tree, who was buried in the earth, who was resurrected from the dead, and who ascended to the heights of heaven, who sits at the right hand of the Father, who has authority to judge and to save everything, through whom the Father created everything from the beginning of the world to the end of the age.
This is the alpha and the omega. This is the beginning and the end–an indescribable beginning and an incomprehensible end. This is the Christ. This is the king. This is Jesus. This is the general. This is the Lord. This is the one who rose up from the dead. This is the one who sits at the right hand of the Father. He bears the Father and is borne by the Father, to whom be the glory and the power forever. Amen.[4]
All of the early church fathers I have mentioned lived during the first two centuries of Christianity, so it is clear that the beliefs that they have espoused are not the fabrication of a later age.
Read the rest of this entry
