Gnosticism was the primary heresy of early Christianity as well as those who rejected Christ when He said we would eat His body and drink His blood…recall those many who left Him before the Last Supper. The Apostles endured because they knew He alone would give them eternal life.
The Apostles Creed was formed. And Catholicism only follows the testimony of the Apostles because they witnessed our Lord.
St. Paul warns us not to put our trust into men or angels but to Christ alone. And Christ gave us the Holy Spirit to guide and lead us in the truth.
Final revelation of Who Christ is came at the Council of Nicea, because Christ’s Divine and Human nature had to be further defined.
If the Church had lost faith in truth and followed Arius, then we would be more like Mormons and believe eventually in the plurality of gods and subsequently regress back to paganism.
Just as the Old Testament affirmed over and over again in the One True God, there are many references to God and His Spirit…in essence, two persons…Christ is the Eternal Word…the Word of God through which the carnal world was raised.
The Risen Christ now brings all mankind and all of creation up to Him one in Being with the Father.
Christianity’s basic understanding was that belief in God became a visible, indestructible reality of God now established among mankind, and that all people were now welcome to join His kingdom – not of being exclusive, holier than thou, but able to enter into a life of love, forgiveness, peace, joy, mercy, fidelity in marriage and the sanctity of family.
The term, ‘Lord’, was used more and more by ancient Christians…the personalizing of God among us—the true intent of Jesus and the Walk at Emmaus, not personal interpretation based on burning of the bosom that would lead one farther away from orthodox Christianity – Christ among us, God truly our Father.
So now with Christ, our trials and sufferings have become light, no more bitterness by the sweat of the brow Adam and Eve were afflicted with because of breaking away from trust in God.
The new kingdom of Christ slowly worked its way into Christian society where forgiveness began to reign instead of former tit for tat as one would find in wars, skirmishes and disputes in ancient times.
This new kingdom of Christ gave way to theologians who drew exclusively on the New Testament in the development of the science of Christology.
Catholicism is based on Christology.
It is Catholicism that Christianity grew, and whose baptismal rite is in use by practically all Protestant denominations making the Protestants our separated brethren. They are still members of the Catholic Church by rite of baptism.
Arius denied the divinity of Christ. For Arius, ‘the Word had a beginning, and was even liable to change and sin. This was tantamount to denying all finality to the revelation of Christ and opening the way to a resurgence of pagan polytheism, with its myriads of intermediate gods and demons.’
Arius’ stand was akin to Mormonism’s stand.
And thus the Council of Nicea brought forth the final revelation of Christ that Christ is of the same substance as the Father. St. Athanasius was the leader in opposing Arius and his believers, the Nicenes. St. Athanasius was exiled 5 times as bishop by them.
The heresy coming out from Arius was ‘the Son was like the Father’.
For Christ to save us from sin, He had to be divine. St. Athanasius found that the term, ‘HOMOOUSIOS’, meaning identical in substance conveyed both distinction and in dentity.
God is love. And subsequently God is relational. How can we say we are of love without relationship? So the nature of God is love, relational, and God is defined as the Holy Trinity.
St. Athanasius taught with the new word, ‘consubstantial’—only the Catholic Church has this word, because the Catholic Church created it for our science of Christology–
there is no other source in the world on Christology except Christ’s Church…
St. Athanasius taught that the Spirit was consubstantial with Father and Son. 'The difficult problem of how he was distinct from Father and Son while sharing the same essence was solved by the differentiating between their modes of origin; the Son is generated but the Spirit proceeds.
Ironically, Mormon sophists are now using St. Athanasius as a reference to prove Joseph Smith was right along …this use now claimed ‘a miracle’ by Mormons that we become gods in Mormon sense…when in fact St. Athanasius taught the opposite.
This is the work of false teachers St. Paul warned us about who corrupt the true faith in Jesus Christ.
We believers in Christ partake in His divine grace He has shared with us. But God alone is God. We will never be gods in our own right.
