Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
John 1:3
“All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
Over many centuries, the church clarified its teaching on the person of Christ by turning to the Scriptures to confront various heresies. Today we consider yet another heresy that did not embrace the full deity of Jesus: Arianism.
Arianism, named after its leading proponent, Arius, rose to prominence in the fourth century and has since reappeared at various times. In essence, the Arian heresy says that Jesus is more than a mere man but less than truly God. Arianism holds that the Son of God is the first and greatest being that our Creator made. Then the Creator made everything else in and through the Son, His first creation. As the first creation of God and the One through whom He made the world, the Son possesses great majesty and dignity. He can even be worshiped, after a fashion, because He is a divine being. Nevertheless, He is not the one true God. He remains ever a creature—perhaps the most glorious of all creatures, but a creature nonetheless.
Certainly, the Arians are correct that God made all things in and through His Son. Texts such as today’s passage tell us as much. Arianism errs, however, in including the Son among the things made by the Creator. Historically, Arianism has tried to justify itself by appealing to the fact that Christ is the Son, comparing the Father’s generation of the Son to how human fathers beget their sons. They have argued that since a human father exists before his son, God the Father must have existed before the Son of God; thus, there was a time when the Son did not exist. Athanasius of Alexandria, the leading opponent of Arianism in the fourth century, powerfully refuted this line of thinking. In addition to appealing to texts such as John 1:1, which directly teach the deity of the Son, Athanasius pointed out that divine generation is not patterned on human generation but rather the other way around. Thus, that human fathers beget their sons in time does not mean that God begat His Son in time. His begetting is eternal, without beginning or end. This is confirmed in the multitude of titles given to Jesus besides “Son.” Athanasius writes in his Discourses Against the Arians: “Scripture speaks of ‘Son,’ in order to herald the natural and true offspring of His essence; and, on the other hand, that none may think of the Offspring humanly, while signifying His essence, it also calls Him Word, Wisdom, and Radiance; to teach us that the generation was impassible, and eternal, and worthy of God.”
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Athanasius employed two key principles of biblical interpretation to refute the Arians. First, he recognized that although the names given to God in Scripture that also apply to human beings teach us much truth about the Lord, there is not an exact correspondence between what is true of God and what is true of man. Second, he was a whole-Bible Christian, building his theology not on only a few verses but on the entire scope of Scripture.
For further study
- Isaiah 9:6–7
- John 16:28
- Colossians 1:15–20
- Hebrews 1
The bible in a year
- Psalms 14–16
- Acts 18