Legend has it "Saint" Nicholas, Bishop of Myra
(who is said to be the inspiration for Santa Claus),
struck Arius the heretic for denying the eternality of Christ
and triune nature of God
during his speech at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.
Decking both the halls and heretics.
Armstrongism has been referred to as Arian or neo-Arian in its belief in Jesus and the Holy Spirit, not quite as far as the Jehovah's Witnesses go, but close.
Arianism would resurface in the West once more in Protestant America. In the fertile soil of American religious-pluralism, entirely new religions sprouted in the nineteenth century. One of them was called the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, otherwise known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This religion is closer to classical Arianism, teaching the Jesus pre-existed before his conception and birth through the Virgin Mary. The Jehovah’s Witnesses identify this pre-existing Son (Word or Logos) as the Archangel Michael. Like the Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the worship of Jesus Christ, but like the ancient Arians, they regard Jesus as a demigod who is godlike in power and ability. In the twentieth century, Arianism saw another American manifestation in the churches founded by Herbert W. Armstrong, in what Protestants refer to as “Armstrongism” which is really just a modern American form of Arianism, similar to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Arianism, in a nutshell, is the rejection of the Trinity. In Arianism, the Trinity is broken down as follows…
1. God the Father is the only God. There is no other.2. Jesus Christ is not God. He is at most a demigod, or a highly powerful angelic-like being, who pre-existed as such before he was born of the Virgin Mary, and was created as such eons ago, before the primordial universe was created. Or, he could be something lesser than that, either a normal man who became a demigod by God’s adoption, or just a highly favored prophet. It all depends on what form of Arianism we’re talking about here, but it’s all Arianism. In ancient Arianism, Jesus Christ was worshiped alongside God the Father. While in modern Arianism, Jesus Christ is respected and revered as “Lord” or “Prophet” but not worshiped in the same sense God the Father is.3. The Holy Spirit is not a Person, but rather the “force” of God, or his “power” moving in the world. Therefore, the Holy Spirit (being just the “force” of God’s power) is not worshiped either. On the Arian Heresy
As Berans Did, a Church of God related site has this:
SEMI-ARIAN
I love history, and this is my blog post, so we're starting with some history. I promise to keep it simple.
Back in the early 200s AD there started an idea that says there is only one God, while the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are just three different ways that this one God presents Himself to us; "modes" if you will. This idea is called by many names today, among which are Sabellianism, Modalism, Monarchianism, Patripassionism, and etc. One of the main teachers of this view was Sabellius. If you are new to Christianity or maybe you are really trying to get away from the Trinity doctrine, this view of God might even make logical sense to you. Good thing is most people eventually give this up. Maybe some day we will go into detail on why this view of God cannot work. If you really want something right away, read Tertullian's "Against Praxaes" and Hippolytus' "Against Noetus" (and keep clearly in mind that these were written in the early 200s). But for the purposes of this blog post, let's just say that the early church was very much opposed to this view.
In the early 300's, along comes a guy named Arius. Arius was one of many Christian leaders around the world who were passionately opposed to Sabellius and his Modalism. So Arius came up with his own view to oppose Sabellius. He went too far in the other direction. According to Arius, Jesus is a created being and is completely separate being from the Father. This view of God started to attract attention and eventually Christianity was split over the nature of God between those who agreed with Arius and those who had a more Trinitarian position. Both halves were opposed to Sabellius. It was this division that motivated Constantine to call the Council of Nicea to settle the issue and reunite Christians. Arius actually accused Niceans of Sabellianism. The decision came down against Arius.
After Nicea, Arianism changed and blended with Trinitarianism. Since all were required to abide by the decision at Nicea, people who still held to Arianism (including Arius) had to try and force their views to make peace with the decision of the Council - at least on the surface. This new view has the Father and the Son as separate beings, but they share a similar substance. The Son is like the Father. They are two separate Gods who consist of the same kind of stuff. This new view is given the name Semi-Arianism. The West held to Nicea but there were so many people in the East holding to this new Semi-Arian view in violation of Nicea that another Council was called, this time at Constantinople.
And the view was indeed new to the fourth century. It was not old or original by any means, as some COG writers might have us believe. Such a claim is simply not true.
In summary, anyone who believes that the Father and the Son are two separate God beings but consist of the same sort of stuff fall into the Semi-Arian category. This is the official view of Armstrongism. The COGs teach the Father and the Son are two completely separate beings and the same stuff that the Father and the Son consist of is called the Holy Spirit. I want to point out that there are two Holy Spirits here - the Father's and the Son's.
Armstrongism is Semi-Arian. Professing Polytheism
Another site had this:
Armstrong accepted a modified Arian view of the nature of God; this was a teaching by Arius in the late third century CE. They believed that deity consisted of a dual divinity: The Eternal (their translation of the Hebrew name of God (Yahweh) and Jesus. He taught that the Holy Spirit is a power, not a person. He promoted the concept of the "Family of God", which consisted of Jehovah, Jesus and human believers in the WCG who became Gods; in other words, a plurality of personal gods. Jude Ministries: Armstrongism
Herbert Armstrong and most Chruch of God leaders loved to mock Biblical Higher Criticism which is the foundation of the anti-intellectualism of the Church of God movement:
The Trinity Debate
The same thing happens for the Trinity debate. The Higher Critics began to publish books on Marcion, Mani, Arian, and the various Gnostics, all who had non-traditional views on what Jesus was, and how he was related to the Father and the Holy Spirit. The problem of the nature of Christ (and thus the Trinity) was obviously a hard one, because it took Christians nearly four centuries to get anything which looked like a consensus on the issue—and even then, it took a Roman Emperor (Constantine) to essentially make it all happen.
I’m not going to act like the non-trinitarian tradition didn’t exist all the way throughout Christian history. Obviously, it did. John Calvin killed Michael Servetus in the middle of the Reformation just for preaching about it. The Higher Critics just gave us a lot more information about the atmosphere and arguments of the New Testament period. And Armstrong, like always, took that history, selectively ignored everything that went against his interpretation, and proclaimed The Truth had been discovered. Was Armstrongism Just a Misreading of Higher Biblical Criticism?
More on Armstrong's interpretations and how error-filled they are:
“Chapter 1: Who and What is God?” (Referring to Mystery of the Ages)
Herbert Armstrong’s teaching
Once again, Armstrong establishes that not only the world in general, but also all professing Christians do not understand who and what God is. Only Armstrong, to whom God has given the special revelation of truth, knows the answers. The answers are in the Bible, of course, but no one knows how to put the Bible’s jigsaw puzzle pieces together except Armstrong. Consequently, whatever Armstrong says about God must be true.
In Armstrong’s view, which we have learned earlier in the book must be equated to God’s view, there are two Gods: One is God and the other is the Logos, or Word, who was is God. They are composed of spirit, and have the form and shape of a human being. The Logos, or Word, is the one through whom God created the universe and the one who became Jesus Christ, at which time the first God became the Father and the Word became the Son. God is in charge and the Word is under him in authority, but still fully God and of the “God kind.” The two of them are eternal and have co-existed together in perfect love eternally. Together they form the one God Family, and their goal is to create other Gods to join them as part of their God Family.
The Holy Spirit is not a third God, but rather the power and mind of the God Family, which emanates from them and which they project in order to create and to exercise their will over the creation.
This means that the Trinity doctrine, which limits God to only three Beings, is a satanic, false and pagan doctrine designed to deny the truth about the real God Family and the plan for humans to enter that Family as full God Beings who are children of God after the God kind. The Trinity doctrine did not come from the Bible, but from Satan, who established the Roman Catholic Church through Simon the Sorcerer. By A.D. 70, all of Christianity was corrupt and following the ways of Simon the Sorcerer. The Sabbath and Passover were exchanged for pagan Sunday and Easter, and in the early A.D. 300s, “Dr. Arius” and other bishops were having to oppose the false Trinity idea. But the pagan Emperor Constantine had the last say, and the Trinity, along with pagan Sunday and Easter Sunday worship, were forced on the church.
Through all this, the tiny true church stood for the truth, but could not prevail against the powerful false church and Roman emperor. All this was prophesied in Revelation 12 and 17.
Problems
Herbert Armstrong claims that God revealed this “truth” to him. Only on the basis of faith in that claim could anyone embrace such “truth.” The Bible supports no such thing. The Bible declares in no uncertain terms that there is one and only one God, not a “God Family” composed of two and ultimately billions of God Beings.
In his attack on the doctrine of the Trinity, Armstrong ignores its actual history, resorting instead to blustery, pseudo-authoritative language to convince readers of his conspiracy theory. The doctrine of the Trinity was developed over many decades of diligent Christian study of the Scriptures, bringing together the apparently paradoxical biblical assertions that there is one God and yet that Jesus Christ is both divine and human in one person. The Bible describes the Holy Spirit as doing those things that only God can do, attesting its divinity. The Bible also describes the Holy Spirit as speaking, sending and revealing, attesting that it is personal. The doctrine of the Trinity is a human explication of biblically revealed truth: 1) God is one and only one; 2) The Father is God; 3) The Son is God; and 4) The Holy Spirit is God. Together these plain, Bible truths mean that the one true God is one in three and three in one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The church does not attempt to explain how this is so, but only that it is so. Armstrong’s so-called revelation denies the biblical record.
Armstrong’s assertion that Simon the Sorcerer founded the Roman Catholic Church and his interpretations of the confrontations between Polycarp, Polycrates and bishops of Rome are historically inaccurate. Overview of Doctrinal Errors in Herbert Armstrong’s Mystery of the Ages
...the “real St. Nicholas” was said to be at the Council of Nicaea, where a major theme of the debate was whether Christ was “homoousios”–meaning “one substance”–with the Father, or “homoioousios”–of similar substance with the Father. In other words, is Christ truly God, as St. Nicholas and the other orthodox bishops believed, or is He just similar to God, a very special creation, but just Man and not God, as Arius and his faction believed.
St. Nicholas was so zealous for the deity of Christ that he actually is said to have assaulted Arius. Advent, St. Nicholas, & the Deity of Christ
21 comments:
Then if that's what you believe why oh WHY do you still stay within Churches of God ?
One of the mainstream Christians I have met since my Armstrong debacle is well informed about the cults which profess Christianity, but actually counter the paradigms which guide it. When I had mentioned my own background to him on one occasion, he actually knew about HWA and the WCG. He came upon that knowledge, oddly enough, through the testimonials of the group which purchased the Ambassador Auditorium. He explained to me the meaning of an arcane term, "seeker church". A seeker church, or seeker cult, is one that targets, or preys upon the unchurched, those who are not well-founded, or well-grounded in Christianity. These folks do not have the depth in knowledge to counter or disprove what the seeker church is teaching them, and they unsuspectingly succumb to it. Once hooked, they are no longer figurative virgins, because new members are fed, and learn information which they then use as criteria to judge and evaluate any information of a religious nature which comes to them, just as those who are well-founded in a church use their background to judge and repel the seeker churches which attempt to recruit them.
HWA and the WCG did attract primarily unchurched people and therefore fit the descriptive term "seeker church". We sometimes wonder why compelling historical documentations, such as what is contained in "Nicholas and Arius" fails to convince, or produce results in the Armstrongite mind. It is because the ACOGs are very adept at programming the minds of members so that they are immunized against factual information which counters the church's collection of "gnosticism" (for lack of a better term). It is why beautiful and truthful materials shared here seemingly go over all ACOG members' heads, except in the occasional cases of those who suddenly encounter the types of life problem on which Armstrongism is not working or helping.
It is hard to find any interpretation of the bible that isn't either crazy or baseless.
The essential nature of the Trinity is not explained in scripture. And we are unary beings and trying to understand a Triune God through some kind of analogy with human beings is inadequate. What we have is data and we must fit the theory to the data. And in the last analysis, Arianism is a much poorer fit to the data than is the Trinity. But “fit” does not give us the essential and incontrovertible definition of God. My guess is that it that the Trinity is not given more space in the Bible because we would not understand it anyway – we have neither the conceptual development nor vocabulary.
As I understand, Arianism was quite population among the Adventists during the 19th Century. And it is also found within the Church of God Seventh Day. Even now some of COG 7th Day ministers are Arianists. This is based on published sources. I have no direct knowledge of either denomination. So, it is not surprising that some form of Arianism would show up in Armstrongist belief.
To his credit, HWA believed that Jesus is God and he states so explicitly in the Mystery of the Ages. This is a non-Arianist position. Armstrongism’s Bitheism and subordination of Jesus in the Trinitarian ontology pushes Armstrongism in the direction of Arianism. But not all the way. And it is not easy to parse out the deity of Jesus from scripture. According to David Bentley Hart, there is only one place in scripture where the deity of Christ is unequivocally stated. The Greek term is “ho theos.” This refers to The God – the Great God. And doubting Thomas referred to Jesus as “ho theos”. And Jesus did not deny the use of this title nor did he correct Thomas.
Yet, Armstrongists seem to believe that Jesus is God but he is a kind of subordinate God. Once again, an echo of Arianism. They use a particular and flawed interpretation of John 14:28 to support this view. And, although it would be a challenge for me to establish, I get the feeling that in the informal Armstrongist view, God is associated with works and Jesus is associated with grace. And the Jesus contribution to the equation of salvation just does not come up to the level of God’s term. Armstrongist bitheism contravenes homoousios. My conjecture.
Scout
Yeah, Gary! Why are you collecting salary from all the splinter groups at once? Are you funneling it to the Rothchild grey lizard Illuminati deep state cabal white hat EBS transgender Bigfoot Loch Ness Mokele-Mbembe Obama Muslims??
RSK said “ Why are you collecting salary from all the splinter groups at once?”
How else do you expect me to be able to keep ordering LOUIS XIII Cognac? Seriously, dude!
Even better! Drinking it away while you collect all those tithes!
The best part is taking a paycheck while pretending to be associated with three different churches! Rod Meredith was a great example for me!
HWA's simplistic naivety is a powerful argument for finishing high school:
In fact even if the rotund fanatic had completed high school, he still wouldn't be sufficiently equipped to assess high level NT scholarship.
Considering all the various ideas about the nature of God, most seem to have problems of one sort or another. One concept which is rarely considered, but has very few of these problems is the concept of Unitarianism, or to give it its proper name, Biblical Unitarianism. This simply says that there is One God, the Father (John 17:3 I Corinthians 8:6) and that Jesus Christ did not exist in the Old Testament and is not also God. God then had a Son in the course of time when he came into existence in the womb of Mary via a virgin birth (Luke 1:31-35). The word "conceive" in these verses means "bring into existence" which therefore denies any sort of pre-existence or of an "incarnation", a word which is nowhere found in the Bible.
The virgin birth simply says that Jesus did not have a human father, but his true biological Father was God Himself. It is for this reason, as it says in Luke 1:35 that Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, is called the "Son of God", which is entirely different in meaning from "God the Son". The assumption that Jesus is God led HWA to believe that God is a "binity" which is essentially what the Council of Nicea concluded. This then led to the Trinity when the Holy Spirit was later considered also to be God. So a binity teaching has exactly the same problems as a binity, and is very little different.
In practical terms what must have happened is that God created a human sperm cell which then fertilised Mary's egg cell to make her pregnant. Christ was clearly a man (Acts 17:31, I Tim.2:5), but nowhere does it say that He was "fully God and fully man", which is self contradictoryin any event, and is another idea derived from the Trinity. HWA also assumed the the Word (logos) in John 1:1 was a "personage" whatever that means, but this is not its biblical defintion, but it simply means God's spoken word, by which he created the Universe i.e by speaking as it says in Genesis 1.
How vile! I bet you were the Mothman, too! And the pope!
As ignorant as Herbert was, he was more biblical and logical than GCI, which makes many of his critics an even greater force for evil. It seems that evil is cyclic. The cult fractures and evolves but will not die.
Anon 3:36:00 PM PST
‘As ignorant as Hebert was, he was more biblical and logical then GCI, which makes his critics an even greater force for evil…..’
How was he more biblical than gci?
There is no doubt he was wrong on many points of scripture, BI for just one example. That is ignorance and biblical illiteracy starring you in the face for starters.
Logical? Lost for words here.
But that ‘his critics are a greater force for evil’ …..Please explain yourself.
If one points out the very obvious flaws in his theology that most certainly does not make one ‘evil’. And you do all those who do point out the theological flaws in Armstrongism, a great disservice.
You are correct here in this, the cult does fracture and evolves, but sadly has not died.
No2, you can joke around here all you want, but we know you are hiding as minister here trying to destroy the church while taking a paycheck. If you hate the church so much then leave!
Since when is it a bad thing to shine a little light that destroys error? Over the years, there have been many people who have seen factual material on these forums and blogs which has made them say to themselves, "If only I had known this back then!"
I've always admired the U.S. Marine Corps for the fact that they refuse to leave their dead behind, no matter the cost! No2HWA is a fine Marine, and it is a pleasure to serve here with him!
This post is too deep for the average COG member to relate to. Never being taught to research church history and Christian tradition, they instead rely upon their leaders to tell them what to believe.
GCI: "Changes, what changes?"
Such honest and biblical men.
Yeah, we all know he likes to slip away during the Winter Family Weekends to post the latest silly thing LCG has done!
How do you know No is taking a paycheck? Which church is he trying to destroy?
"... they instead rely upon their leaders to tell them what to believe."
Instead of what? How is that any different than any other belief system or ideology?
Well, 1:38, many of us here have outgrown the old "follow the leader" charade.
From time to time, a subject can pique any of our interest. There are two options. Simply stated, one is find a teacher. The other is do your own research. Now, the process becomes more complicated if the subject involves God, and belief. In a perfect world, one might seek and find someone who is vastly more knowledgeable, and closer to God, and who could share information that one simply could not obtain elsewhere. Unfortunately, such teachers are human, they have flaws, and they have their own ideas, with all three factors being potential contaminants. Plus, men derive a sense of power from the number of followers they collect, they have a propensity to want to control those followers, and there is also the money factor. They can only take you so far until, if your mind is functional and active, you notice the contaminants mentioned above, but you really want to take it further, to correct the contaminants and to learn more. You are aware that some things are just not right, in fact
they are just plain wrong. You could then leave, or you could lower your expectations and remain around. Of course they are going to manipulate you with all manner of persuasive cliches involving bad attitudes, intellectual vanity, God's True Church, the rebellion of Korah, whether you are really converted, and the Lake of Fire, as if they were the actual gate keepers. A sizable percentage, their core group, generally remains despite what they see and feel.
If this were college, or university, if you wanted more knowledge, you could take more advanced courses. Go into graduate studies. One of the big no nos in Armstrongism has always been going to sources outside of the church to fact check or gain more information. That is totally verboten, and could get you kicked out, which might be more damaging, psychologically, than making a conscious decision to leave on your own.
In spite of the way in which the whole guru thing has failed for some people, when they leave, they often seek out a new guru. Forgetting Einstein's definition of insanity for the moment, this is an amazingly lazy thing to do! It's what got them into trouble in the first place.
Many of us here have simply taken personal responsibility for our incoming information. We're interested in knowledge and truth, and have realized that these are not available through an organized belief system with proprietary teachers. Your statement regarding requirements to follow the leader in any other belief system only applies to those who would look to a belief system in the first place. Bad grammar alert! That ain't us!
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