4/10/2023 0 Comments Bible verse john 3 16![]() For example, the Bible affirms that the apostles were part of the foundation of the Church: “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20). In addition to the problem of pre-conceived perceptions about God based on heathen influences, it is important to understand the arrogance that accompanied these prejudices. Origen’s teaching dominated the East in the third and fourth centuries.… he insisted that Father, Son and Spirit were three eternally distinct persons (Greek hypostaseis–roughly the same as personae).… Origen’s ideas were deeply coloured by Middle Platonism, which graded existence into different levels (p. He drew upon Stoicism and Roman law for his language, and taught that God was one being ( substantia) but three concrete individuals ( personae).… Tertullian gave the Latin West a theological vocabulary that has hardly yet been bettered. These theologians read the Bible through the lenses of their non-biblical biases, and one of the great debates of the day involved the nature of God: Origen, and even Tertullian, may at times have been so heavily influenced by them as to cross the narrow frontier that separates orthodoxy from heresy (p. Tertullian used the language and thought-forms of law, rhetoric and Stoicism-and Montanism Clement and Origen used the concepts of Platonism and Pythagoreanism-and Christian Gnosticism. The differences between the orthodoxy of, for instance, Alexandria and Carthage, arose out of the different ways of thinking of their theologians. ![]() In contrasting the thinking of various church scholars of the late second century ad, Eerdmans’ Handbook compares the two primary North African cities that influenced such men as Tertullian and Origen: Read that again and consider the implications.Ĭlearly, Tertullian and others were products of their educations, which were heavily influenced by the philosophical and pagan ideas of their time and location. 111, 1977).īut who was Tertullian, and from where did he get his ideas about God? Tertullian was born around 160ad and “received the typical education of the late second century.… But his well-known question, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ expressed a rejection of philosophy that was not true of his own work, since he demonstrated how pagan intellectual achievements could be made to serve Christianity” (p. Sadly, most people do not know the true God-not even most professing Christians! Many assume without ever proving it that the God of the Bible is a trinity-three persons ( hypostases) in one-but where did this concept come from? The highly regarded Eerdmans’ Handbook to the History of Christianity tells us that “In Against Praxeas, Tertullian developed the doctrine of the Trinity” (ed. It is easy to pass over these opening words without challenging our thinking about who God is. For example, who and what is God? And who is the Son? Why did God give His Son for us? And what does it mean to perish or to have everlasting life? These are all very important questions, but for now, consider just the first two words of that verse: “For God…” The Greek Version However, there is much more meaning behind this “golden verse” than most professing Christians understand. Of course, that much is true, and should be a great source of inspiration and encouragement. Many professing Christians think they know, but mostly what they understand about this special verse is simply that God loves us and Christ died for us. ![]() Yet, for all the advertisement of this verse, and even though it is perhaps the most memorized verse of the entire Bible, how many people really know what it means? “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” ![]() What am I referring to? The verse that is perhaps the most widely displayed verse from the entire Bible-John 3:16. And if you have watched an American football game, there it is, in the background, when a field goal is attempted. Certainly, if you have seen a baseball game, there it is in the stands-right behind home plate. Sometimes we see it painted on a rock surface along the road. ![]()
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