Wartburg Speaks

"The deplorable, miserable condition which I discovered lately when I, too, was a visitor, has forced and urged me to prepare [publish] this Catechism, or Christian doctrine, in this small, plain, simple form." Martin Luther

Saturday, July 08, 2006

LUTHER 1527 The Arian and Semi-Arian Reaction, A.D. 325-361













LUTHER 1527
In the first place, we take up the article that Christ sits at the right hand of God, which the fanatics maintain makes it impossible for Christ’s body also to be in the Supper. Now if we ask how they interpret God’s “right hand” where Christ sits, I suppose they will dream up for us, as one does for the children, an imaginary heaven in which a golden throne stands, and Christ sits beside the Father in a cowl and golden crown, the way artists paint it. For if they did not have such childish, fleshly ideas of the right hand of God, they surely would not allow the idea of Christ’s bodily presence in the Supper to vex them so or castigate themselves so with the saying of Augustine (whom in other respects they do not believe at all, nor anyone else), “Christ must be bodily in one place, but his truth is everywhere.”(In Genuine Exposition, C 6, Oecolampadius had quoted from Canon Law (Decretum of Gratian, Part III, de Consecratione, dist. II, c. 44, c. 1. Corpus Iuris Canonici, I, col. 1330) without citing Augustine. The Decretum reads: “The body in which he arose must [oportet] be in one place”; Augustine’s text (Gospel of John, Tractate 30, 1. PNF1 7, 186) reads potest, but the context justifies the PNF translation, “can be only in one place.”)-Martin Luther

The Arian and Semi-Arian Reaction, A.D. 325-361.

Soon after this Arius, having been formally acquitted of the charge of heresy by a council at Jerusalem (A.D. 335), was to have been solemnly received back into the fellowship of the church at Constantinople. But on the evening before the intended procession from the imperial palace to the church of the Apostles, he suddenly died (A.D. 336), at the age of over eighty years, of an attack like cholera, while attending to a call of nature. This death was regarded by many as a divine judgment; by others, it was attributed to poisoning by enemies; by others, to the excessive joy of Arius in his triumph.
On the death of Constantine (337), who had shortly before received baptism from the Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia, Athanasius was recalled from his banishment (338) by Constantine II. († 340), and received by the people with great enthusiasm; “more joyously than ever an emperor.” Some months afterwards (339) he held a council of nearly a hundred bishops in Alexandria for the vindication of the Nicene doctrine. But this was a temporary triumph.
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH Schaff Volume 3 NICENE AND POST-NICENE CHRISTIANTY A.D. 311-600
(Pages 633-634)

2 Comments:

Blogger LPC said...

Brother Sal,

Thanks for this quote from Luther. But Luther described exactly what Fundamentalists and Charismanix teach, that there is a throne and Jesus is at the right -- some even told me that they have visions of God the Father having white beard.

Lito

7/15/2006 2:09 AM  
Blogger William Weedon said...

Dear Lito,

Not at all! Luther teaches precisely what St. John of Damascus taught on the question:

We hold, moreover, that Christ sits in the body at the right hand of God the Father, but we do not hold that the right hand of the Father is actual place. For how could He that is uncircumscribed have a right hand limited by place? Right hands and left hands belong to what is circumscribed. But we understand the right hand of the Father to be the glory and honour of the Godhead in which the Son of God, who existed as God before the ages, and is of like essence to the Father, and in the end became flesh, has a seat in the body, His flesh sharing in the glory. For He along with His flesh is adored with one adoration by all creation.
- St. John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, Chapter 2

7/18/2006 8:36 AM  

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