HOLD FAST TO THE TRUTH: AVOID HERESIES
1 John 2:22–28; Psalm 98; John 1:19–28
“Beloved, who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist—he who denies the Father and the Son. Anyone who denies the Son does not have the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.” With these words, St. John warns us against false teachers who reject Jesus as the Messiah and exhorts us to stick to our commitment to God. According to the gospel, we are to carry on John’s work of kingdom proclamation into the modern age by speaking and acting in ways that reflect the kingdom. So, do you lie? Do you give false testimony or feign an accusation?
Today the Church celebrates the memorial of two great saints: Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, bishops and doctors of the Church. They both stood to preserve the right teachings of the church. Through them, we came to have a fuller understanding of the Trinity.
ST. BASIL
ST. BASIL fought against the Arian heresy called Arianism. (Arius stated the belief that Jesus was more than man but less than God.) He denied the true divinity of Jesus Christ. He also fought against pneumatomachianism, which strenuously opposed the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Basil is credited with the formula “of one being” or essence in God [hypostasis]. This formula was developed into the Nicene Creed as “consubstantial of one being with the Father.” Jesus says in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.”.
ST. GREGORY
St. Gregory’s defense of the doctrine of the Trinity made him one of the greatest champions of orthodoxy against Arianism. He wrote to his successor, Nectarius, and others against the heresy of Apollinaris, who denied the existence of a human soul in Christ. For him, Jesus did not cease to be God when he became a man, nor did he lose any of his divine attributes when he took on human nature. On the Holy Spirit, Gregory uses the word “procession,” which is found in John 15:26. And so, the Creed says, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”
The long and short of this debate was to state the fact that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the same God but are not the same person. They are “God-identical but person-distinct.” In other words, the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. Jesus is God, but he is not the Father or the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, but He is not the Son or the Father. They are different people, not three different ways of looking at God or three gods.
Beloved, let us continue to hold on to the true teaching of the church and guard against present-day false teachers and preachers. These heresies of old are evolving in modern-day neo-paganism, prosperity gospels, pseudo-faith and syncretism. Let us be steadfast and hold on to the truth.
Let us pray.
O God, who were pleased to give light to your church by the example and teaching of the bishops, Saints Basil and Gregory, grant, we pray, that in humility we may learn your truth and practice it faithfully in charity. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen
Fr. Daniel Evbotokhai
