Know Your Heretics: Photinus

Know Your Heretics
Justin Holcomb Director of the Resurgence
Know Your Heretics series

Questioning the Trinity

After the Council of Nicaea in 325, the orthodox understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity as three persons sharing one divine essence was not universally agreed upon. One theologian who disagreed was Photinus, the Bishop of Sirmium and the disciple of Marcellus.

Did God Choose a Man to Become His Son?

The theology of Photinus veered close to adoptionism by suggesting that the man Jesus was chosen by God to be his Son when he was in Mary’s womb. Photinus denied the doctrine of the pre-existence of the Son.

“Photinus elevates man to the place of Son...”

Ambrose described Photinus’ theology in his De Fide: “We say that God is One, not as does Photinus, holding that the Son first came into existence in the Virgin’s womb.”

Hilary of Poitiers also spoke of the theology of Photinus in his De Trinitate:
Sabellius denies that there is a Son of God; against him Photinus elevates man to the place of Son. Photinus will hear nothing of a Son born before the worlds… Our present adversaries are ranted in the matter of the Divine nature of the Son… Photinus is convicted of ignorance, or else of falsehood, in his denial of the Son’s birth before the worlds…Photinus maintains His manhood, though in maintaining it he forgets that Christ was born as God before the worlds.

In other words, Photinus did not believe that the second person of the Trinity—the divine Word, the Son of God—existed with the Father in eternity past. He believed there is no second person of the Trinity that existed before the human person Jesus of Nazareth.

The Word Was With God in the Beginning

The most straightforward response to this denial of the pre-existence of the Son is found in John 1:1-3. This passage explicitly expresses the fact that the Word, Jesus—who “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14)—existed from before creation with the Father. Indeed, it was through him that all things were created.

Hilary of Poitiers cites John 5:17-19 to show that the works of the Father are often executed by the Son. Hilary argued that because the Son has the power to do the same things as the Father, he must have the same nature.

“The Word existed from before creation with the Father”

Contrary to Photinus’ teaching, the Father and the Son co-existed in complete equality from eternity past, and it was the second, eternally-existing person of the Trinity who took on flesh and became incarnate in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Contemporary Relevance: Jesus Is Fully God

The error of Photinus is important for several reasons. If the Son did not exist eternally with God the Father, then he cannot be fully and completely God. If the Son is merely a man chosen by God to be his son, then Jesus cannot be fully God and fully man.

This error would obliterate the doctrine of the atonement. The reason that Christ can satisfy the wrath of God is that he is fully God, and the reason that he can represent humanity is that he is fully man. Without the doctrine of the pre-existence of the Son, Jesus is merely a man who lived a good life as a spiritual teacher here on earth but can in no way be the savior of the world.

Originally Posted By Justin Holcolmb from http://www.theresurgence.com/



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The Truth & The Life in Parenting / Exchange Conference....

Incredible teaching..... The same could apply for the Christian... We must depend on the Word of God and magnify Jesus not preachers / teachers... Pastor Mark does a great job of unpacking the realities that we see daily and understand to be a problem, but have trouble communicating the problem or making sense of it... Thank you God for your wisdom that you have given to Pastor Mark.... To God our Savior who alone is wise, be glory & majesty / dominion & power, both now and forever, AMEN.

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Joel Osteen's New Age Life Now?

Best of Flash Back. Many have asked us recently for informaiton on why we believe Joel Osteen is teaching New Age theology. Here is an article Brannon wrote back in February 2006.

Joel Osteen's New Age Life Now?
By Brannon Howse

"Whatever you conceive you can achieve."

With this favorite karma-changing promise, New Agers believe you need only use the "unlimited" power and consciousness of your mind to bring about all your dreams, desires and wishes.

Cloaked in a "Christian" package, Joel Osteen's Your Best Life Now, bears an uncomfortable and dangerous similarity to this most popular of New Age claims. Sample a few of the Osteen versions:

1) "You will produce what you're continually seeing in your mind. If you foster an image of defeat and failure, then you're going to live that kind of life. But if you develop an image of victory, success, health, abundance, joy, peace, and happiness, nothing on earth will be able to hold those things from you." (page 5)

2) "You must conceive it in your heart and mind before you can receive it." (page 6)

3) "You must look through your 'eyes of faith' and start seeing yourself as happy, healthy and whole." (page 15)

4) "What you will receive is directly connected to how you believe." (page 22)

5) "We receive what we believe." (page 72)

6) "Learn how to conceive. Keep the image of what you want to become in front of you. You're going to become what you believe." (page 81)

Osteen now travels the country, packing out stadiums with his happy-talk. But I'd like to see Osteen pay a visit to China, preach his "your best life now" drivel, and see how Christians there respond. Let Osteen look into the eyes of Pastor Lei who has been repeatedly arrested and beaten for preaching the Word of God in his church-a church not licensed by the Chinese government. How would the American's best life work out for Pastor Lei and his congregation? Perhaps their jail time for the Gospel would give them time to assess Rev. Osteen's claims.
Have these and countless other persecuted Christians been beaten, jailed and murdered because they "received what they believed," or did these terrible things happen to them because they did not "develop an image of victory, success, health, abundance, joy, peace, and happiness"?

Were eleven of Jesus' disciples martyred because, "they received what they believed"? Were the disciples living under a "curse of poverty and defeat" as Osteen says of so many? Here's a role call of questions I'd like to ask Mr. Osteen. Why is it, Joel, that:

• Paul and Matthew were beheaded?

• Barnabas was burned to death?

• Mark was dragged to death?

• James, the less, was clubbed to death?

• Peter, Philip, and Andrew were crucified?

• Thomas was speared to death?

• Luke was hung by the neck until dead?

• Stephen was stoned?

How would these disciples take to the best-life message?

Yes, I know. Joel's promises sound so much better to American ears than all those warnings of Jesus about being hated by most people for His sake. But it remains that in large measure, Joel's offering can be described as nothing less than blasphemy. On page 36, he claims, "God has a big dream for your life." On page 56: "God sees you as a champion. He believes in you even more than you believe in yourself!" And on page 110: "God has confidence in you."

Osteen does not provide a single Bible verse to back up these statements…because there are none. Nowhere in the Bible do we read that God believes or has confidence in us. He loves us, but does not believe in us. On the contrary, He knows all too well how unbelievably fickle and untrustworthy we humans actually are. It's not like Joel describes on page 57: "Believe it or not, that is how God sees you, too. He regards you as a strong, courageous, successful, overcoming person."

Furthermore, God does not define our success in materialistic terms as Joel does. God is interested in our obedience above all. On page 63, Joel writes:

As long as you are pressing forward, you can hold your head up high, knowing that you are a "work in progress," and God is in the process of changing you. He's looking at your last two good moves.

Joel, where in the Bible do you read that God is not looking at our last two bad moves but our last two good moves? Isaiah 64:6 says that even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags or wickedness to God because He is so holy. Even if God did look at our last two good moves, He would still see filthy rags.

Or how about this Osteen gospel gem from page 95:

"Be the best you can be, then you can feel good about yourself."

Where in the Bible do we find this teaching? What if your best is getting drunk just once a week instead of twice a week? Should you still feel good about yourself?

But wait. I've saved Joel's most outrageous statement for last (drum roll please). On page 144, Joel elevates us to the heavenlies by pointing out that "You may even need to forgive God."

Whoa! And exactly what would we be forgiving God for? As I recall, forgiveness is for sins-or at least mistakes. But which of those has God made? Not a one according to any Bible I've ever read.

Oswald Chambers offers a perspective on the kind of thing the Osteens of the world do to Christians:

"Satan's great aim is to deflect us from the center. He will allow us to be devoted to the death to any cause, any enterprise, to anything but the Lord Jesus."

Hebrews 13:9 instructs us to not be carried away by all sorts of strange teachings (deflected from the center) but sadly, that is exactly what is happening for many at the hand of Joel Osteen.

Instead of pursuing our best life now, we should pursue the things of the Lord so we can have our best life later. I fear that for many who follow Joel's false teaching, this life is the best they will get. The false gospel proclaimed by Joel Osteen and accepted as truth by millions may allow many to achieve what they can conceive of the things in this world, but true to Jesus' promise, they may lose their souls in the pursuit.

Originally Posted by Brannon Howse at www.worldviewweekend.com

Know Your Heretics: Eutyches

Know Your Heretics
Justin Holcomb Director of the Resurgence
Know Your Heretics series

Historical Background: Eutyches

Eutyches (378-454) was in charge of the monastery at Constantinople and was second in command, only lower than the Bishop, in terms of authority there.

Is Jesus a Blend of God & Man?
The early church taught that Jesus Christ was one person with two natures—a divine nature and a human nature.

Eutyches was guilty of over-emphasizing the fact that Jesus Christ was one person and blurred the distinction between his divine and human natures. This was opposite of Nestorius’ heresy.

About Eutyches, church historian Stephen Nichols writes: “To him Christ was a third thing (the Latin expression is tertium quid)….One new and different person fashioned out of two natures is how he liked to put it. That is a theological way of saying yellow and blue makes green.”
When asked by Florentius if he believed there were two natures in Christ, Eutyches argued that there was only one nature in Christ after the incarnation:

Florentius: “Do you or do you not admit that our Lord who is of the Virgin is consubstantial [with us] and of two natures after the incarnation?”

Eutyches: “I admit that our Lord was of two natures before the union, but after the union one nature.”

Orthodox Response: Jesus Is Fully God & Fully Man

In his Tome, Leo the Great offers a beautiful response to the thought of Eutyches: “For just as the God [deity] is not changed by his compassion, so the man [manhood] is not swallowed up by the dignity [of the Godhead].” The human nature and the divine nature in Christ remain distinct and unmixed in the incarnation so that Jesus is truly God and truly man.

Flavian, who was the Bishop of Constantinople, called a synod that met at Constantinople in 448 at which the teachings of Eutyches were deemed heretical. In the Chalcedonian Creed there are phrases directed toward Eutyches: Christ is “to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided in two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Jesus Is Our Representative

Stephen Nichols clearly describes the problem with Eutyches’ teachings: “The problem with stressing the unity without the counterbalance of the two intact natures, as Eutyches does, is that Christ loses his human and divine identity. As such, he is not truly our representative. The Christ of Eutyches falls short of Paul’s teaching of Christ as the last Adam (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:42-49).”

The orthodox theologians of the first several centuries saw an intimate connection between the incarnation and the atoning work of Christ.

This is why Leo the Great writes:

Without detriment therefore to the properties of either substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality; and for the paying off of the debt belonging to our condition, inviolable nature was united with passible nature, and true God and true man were combined to form one Lord, so that, as suits the needs of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and rise again with the other.

Originally Posted By Justin Holcolmb from http://www.theresurgence.com/

How to Have Accountability When You Don’t Have Elders....

By Bob Thune (Friday October 8th 2010)

In my last post, I argued that church planters should not install elders until the church has clearly crossed the line from “apostolic missionary band” to “established church.” But how can you ensure appropriate accountability and community in the interim?

Accountability and community are crucial in church planting, for at least two reasons:

1) Leaders often crash and burn from lack of proper accountability.

2) Even the most type-A church planter doesn’t want to be the only guy with a target on his back. Satan, critics, and disgruntled people are going to take their shots at you. Might as well have some company.

Below are the four types of accountability you must have in the early stages of a church plant, and some suggestions on how to go about getting them, before you’ve raised up additional elders.


Moral Accountability

Someone needs to be asking you the hard questions about your marriage, your thought life, your moral integrity. Until you have elders to serve as a band of brothers in this area, you must find others to do it. When we planted our church, I set up an external advisory board of four older, godly men from other churches who met with me at least once a month for this purpose.


Financial Accountability

If you’re a church planter, you probably suck at financial administration so you should immediately recruit a team of 3-4 church members, or outside advisors, who can help oversee the financial affairs of the church. Obviously you must choose prayerfully: you want servant leaders, not power brokers who are going to try to steer the church through the checkbook.

I recruited an accountant, a banker, a pastoral intern, and a corporate lawyer from our launch team and asked them to help me oversee budgeting, expenses, and accounting. The lead elder (me) still set the direction and the financial priorities of the church. But having a team ensured that I had some accountability—and more importantly, some very competent help with the details.

Doctrinal Accountability

This is an easy one if you’re part of a network like Acts 29 that has a robust doctrinal statement. Since elders are required to guard sound doctrine (Titus 1:9), make sure your people know that you aren’t making up your theology as you go.

Leadership Accountability

This is perhaps the hardest piece of the puzzle. You need the freedom to lead the church according to the calling God has given you. But you also need to seek input from others in order to avoid becoming (or even just being perceived as) a dictator.

Instead of making major decisions in a vacuum, run them by key leaders and influencers conversationally. You’re not giving these people “veto power”—in the end, it’s still your call. But by seeking input from others and making your decisions “in the open,” you’ll gain the trust of your people and occasionally save yourself from some really bad decisions.

Church planters commonly make the mistake of caving to pressure and installing untested or unqualified elders early on in a church plant. The point of this post is to show that you can have the functions of eldership without rushing to put the structure in place. You are responsible before God to raise up and train additional elders from within your church as quickly as possible. Just don’t make the mistake of pulling the trigger too quickly. As Alexander Strauch says in his excellent book on eldership: “Better to have no elders than the wrong ones.”

Originally Posted at http://www.theresurgence.com/ 

Why Installing Elders Too Quickly Can Kill Your Church...

By Bob Thune (Saturday October 2nd 2010)

I recently met a church planter who was excited about the team God was bringing together around him: a launch team of 15 people, including 3 elders. It never dawned on him that he was making a colossal mistake.

Paul left Titus in Crete with instructions to straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town (Titus 1:5). Notice the order: first, Paul and his companions planted a church, then appointed elders. The sequence is important.

American Christianity has been greatly influenced by the “parish” model of church-planting: send a group of people from church A somewhere new to establish church B. In this model, it may make sense to have elders from the beginning. The people already know each other, the culture of the church is defined, and the support of the mother church provides a fallback in case of leadership conflict.

Most of the church planters I know are not using a parish model. They are planting missional churches: starting from scratch, leading a small band of people as missionaries into new territory, and shaping the DNA of a church from ground zero. This model of church-planting mirrors Paul’s own ministry. Like Paul, you need to plant the church before you install elders. If you install elders too early in a missional church plant, you will most likely kill your church. Here’s why:

1. A missional church must start with an “apostolic band.”

You and your launch team are not Titus on Crete. You are Paul and his compadres landing on Crete in the first place. Every missional church plant starts as an apostolic band of missionary-gatherers, then coalesces into an established church.

Statistics show that 50-60% of your launch team won’t be around in two years. That most likely includes one or two men you have in mind for eldership! If you install elders in the apostolic band stage, you risk causing chaos in your fragile community when Barnabas and Paul decide to part ways.

2. Elders are a stabilizing structure.

When you install elders, you are implicitly telling your people, “We are established now.” People begin to see your church as a “real church” instead of a fledgling church plant. If you stabilize too fast, you lose momentum and kill the mission. It’s like launching a rocket: once you’re safely headed to orbit, you can jettison your rocket boosters. But if you jettison them during liftoff, you’re in big trouble. Installing elders inside of 18 months, or under 100 people, is a very bad idea. It will keep your church from ever getting into orbit.

3. Elders must be proven leaders in the eyes of the people you have.

“But I have good, biblically qualified men,” one church planter told me. “Shouldn’t they be elders?” Have they proven themselves by gaining the respect, trust, and confidence of the people you’re leading (especially new Christians and non-Christians) and by bearing fruit in ministry? Scripture requires that elders and deacons “be tested first” (1 Tim. 3:10). This testing must take place in the current context, not a previous one.

Some critics insist that any planter who doesn’t install elders immediately is vying for power and control. Every church planting agency I’m aware of follows this practice. A potential church planter is carefully tested and approved, then allowed to lead solo (with outside accountability) until additional qualified men are raised up from within the new church.

There’s a reason wise church planting agencies follow this strategy: Satan loves to wreck churches through leadership conflict. Church planting requires a man like Paul who has the character, gifting, and persistence to shape a church where it doesn’t exist; the discernment to feed the sheep and kill the wolves; and the humility, patience, and selflessness to raise up others to shepherd the flock alongside him.

Originally Posted at http://www.theresurgence.com/

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