Does Doctrine Matter?

Athanasius and the Church Today

In this essay, I shall do several things. First, I shall give examples that show that doctrine scarcely matters in the Episcopal Church today. Secondly, I shall examine an ancient dispute over doctrine, and show that doctrine mattered and mattered greatly. Thirdly, I shall take examples of belief and practice current in the Episcopal Church today and show why doctrine matters. Among other things, I shall show that doctrine matters in regard to how we interpret Scripture.

The Irrelevance of Doctrine for ECUSA

Does doctrine matter? Doctrine matters, but it scarcely matters in the Episcopal Church today. Let me give you an example. At present, the church is embroiled in a bitter battle over sexuality. Many statements have been made, books written, essays published. Rarely, almost never, does doctrine play a significant role in these discussions. For example, in 1987, Timothy Sedgwick, presently a professor of ethics at Virginia Seminary, published a book on Sacramental Ethics. That text contained significant teaching on sexuality, but no awareness of how the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation might have a bearing on sexual ethics. In 1991, the faculty of Virginia Seminary published a series of essays entitled A Wholesome Example. It contained biblical, pastoral, and historical material relating to sexuality, but no theological section. In 1995, the House of Bishops published a pastoral study document on sexuality entitled Continuing the Dialogue. It contained no section on doctrine. The 1996 text, Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies, promoted a revisionist view of sexuality. It had no sustained theological analysis. Prior to the recent convention in Denver, the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music published a document favoring the development of liturgies for blessing same sex unions. It contained no doctrinal section. The American Anglican Congress published a rebuttal to that report. It contained no theological analysis. Recently, the Diocese of New York published an essay on how to interpret Scripture, an essay designed to use Scripture to promote homosexual unions. It's underlying theology was never articulated in the context of orthodox doctrine. In short, doctrine scarcely matters in the Episcopal Church.

Did doctrine ever matter? Yes, always. Does doctrine matter now? Yes, more than ever. Let me show why, but first, let me describe one of the first great doctrinal controversies, the Arian heresy.

Athanasius and the Arian Heresy

Arius was a theologian who lived during the first part of the fourth century. He believed that the greatness and holiness of God should not be divided or diminished. As a result, he did not think that there were two or more "beings" inside God. Rather, he held that God was one, indivisible, transcendent, ever holy, a single divine reality. Therefore, when he read John 1:1 that the Word was in the beginning, that the Word was with God, and was God he did not really believe that there was a Word with God which would also be God. For Arius, if the Word was also God, that would imply two beings in God, God and God the Word, and that division would subtract from the greatness of God. Rather than being God, the Word was created by God, the first and greatest of God's creatures. By means of this created Word, God made all things, and further, God sent the created Word to be incarnate in Jesus Christ.

But we might say, could not Arius read John 1:1 which plainly states that the Word was God? Yes, Arius could read, but he read the whole of Scripture. For example, he read John 14:28 where Jesus Christ the Word proclaims "the Father is greater than I." Or, Arius would note that Hebrews 1:4 seems to imply that Jesus Christ began as less than the angels and was subsequently made greater than the angels. Or, I Cor. 1:24 and Proverbs 8:22 state that the Christ is the Wisdom of God and that this Wisdom was created, and Acts 2:36 implies that Jesus was made Lord and Christ rather than being God from the beginning. These verses and more convinced Arius that the Word that became incarnate in Jesus Christ was not God. Rather, the Word was made by God, the first and greatest of God's creatures.

Against Arius, Athanasius was the great defender of orthodox faith. He showed that Scripture does indeed proclaim that Jesus Christ was God. When he read Scripture, he believed that the Word was God and with God, and that God the Father sent the eternal Word to become incarnate in Jesus Christ. But how did Athanasius know that his interpretation of Scripture was the right one? Why couldn't Arius be right? How, in fact, do we decide whose interpretation of Scripture is the right one, especially today when so many rival interpretations are presented to the church?

Athanasius did not interpret Scripture in a vacuum. He belonged to a tradition, a tradition of interpreting Scripture that went back to Jesus himself. For example, we may read in Luke 24:27 that "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." This is only one of a number of New Testament passages that indicate that Jesus Christ taught the early apostles how to interpret Scripture. These apostles passed on their way of understanding Scripture to their successors, and this way of understanding Scripture was eventually written down as a series of statements. These basic statements of Christian Truth came to be called the "Canon of Truth" or the "Rule of Faith." Eventually, these rules of faith developed into Creeds, and it is the Creeds that give us the doctrinal pattern that makes sense of Scripture. The Creeds not only help interpret Scripture, but also defined Christian Truth over against all other versions of truth.

In sum, Athanasius knew that he was right and Arius wrong because his understanding of Scripture reflected the doctrine passed down in the church from the apostles. Here is how patristic scholar Francis Young describes Athanasius' use of doctrine to make sense of Scripture,

Athanasius is not neglectful of the details of the [biblical] text. But fundamentally it is his sense of the overarching plot, a sense inherited from the past and ingrained in the tradition of the Church, which allows him to be innovative in exegetical detail and confident of providing the correct and "pious" reading. The "Canon of Truth" or "Rule of Faith" expresses the mind of scripture, and an exegesis that damages the coherence of that plot, that hypotheses, that coherence, that skopos [intent], cannot be right.(1)

In the last analysis, then, Athanasius is confident that his interpretation is correct because he has received insight into the "mind" of scripture through the Canon of Truth received from his predecessors.(2)

Because of doctrine Athanasius was able to rightly interpret Scripture, and as he interpreted Scripture, he further developed right doctrine. What then, were some of the important doctrinal ideas that he derived from Scripture as interpreted by the Canon of Truth? I will enumerate some of them.

First, against Arius, Athanasius did not believe that the Word that became incarnate in Jesus Christ was a creature. Nor did he believe that God was a simple one. Rather, the Son of God that became incarnate in Jesus was God, eternally God, always existing as the Son or Word of God. When God the Father sent the Son to be incarnate in Jesus Christ, Christ revealed the nature, the character, the person of God the Father. He revealed God's nature the way a son would reveal the nature of his father. For this reason, Athanasius would say that God the Son was begotten of the Father. He did not mean that Christ was begotten the way a mother gives birth to a child. Rather, the Son or Word of God was begotten in that the Father sent the Son and the Son revealed the Father's true nature. Since both Father and Son were eternal, he would then say the Son was eternally begotten of the Father.

Athanasius used several analogies to understand how God the Son was eternally begotten of the Father. His favorite, however, was the analogy of the sun and its brightness. For Athanasius, God the Son eternally comes forth from God the Father like bright sunlight forever coming from the sun. The sun is light, and when the brightness comes from the sun, it is also light. But the bright sunlight and the sun are not the same, yet they have the same nature since both are light. Similarly, the Son is eternally begotten of the Father like brightness from the sun. Father and Son are not the same, yet both are God just as the sun and its brightness are both light. Here is Athanasius,

For although the Son, as such, cannot be otherwise than begotten of the Father, and consequently cannot be the Father; yet, as being begotten of the Father, he cannot but be God; and as being God, He cannot but be one in essence with the Father; and, therefore, He and the Father are one, one with regard to their proper and common nature, and one in the unity of the Godhead. Thus brightness also is light, it is not second to the sun, nor a different light, nor does it consist simply in a borrowed nature, but it is an entire and proper offspring. And such an offspring is of necessity one light; and no one would say the sun and its brightness were two separate lights; and yet the son and that brightness are not one and the same thing. Still, the light from the sun, which enlightens all things by its brightness, is but one. This is an emblem of the Divinity of the Son of God, which is, indeed, essentially one with that of His Father.(3)

Here we see Athanasius saying several things. First, Father and Son are related as sun and its bright sunlight. The Father is not the Son just as the sun's brightness is not the sun. Yet the Father and the Son are "one in essence," they have a "common nature." For Athanasius, these phrases mean that Father and Son are both God. Once Athanasius had reached these conclusions, he was led to further doctrinal conclusions.

First, Father and Son are different yet related. They are different since the one who sends is not the one who is sent. They are related since the one sent reveals the one who sends. Since Father and Son are different yet related, they do different yet related things. The Father created the world, and when it was corrupted by sin, he sent the Son to redeem it. The Father created, the Son redeems. Secondly, since the Son who became incarnate in Jesus was God, and since Jesus was fully human, Jesus Christ was and is fully human and fully God. Third, since the man Jesus was the one born of the Virgin Mary, the one who suffered under Pontius Pilate, God the Word became incarnate in a specific person. This implies that the incarnation is not a symbol for God being incarnate in everything, but God was incarnate in a particular man Jesus Christ and only in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the incarnate presence of God in Jesus Christ is different from the presence of God in creation or in other great figures. In creation, we can see that God is powerful and orderly, but in Jesus Christ, God reveals himself as a person who saves from sin and death. Athanasius considered the belief that creation or other great figures could reveal the saving nature of God to be idolatry.

Further, Athanasius knew that if he accepted the Arian heresy, this would imply that the Word that became incarnate in Jesus Christ was not God. Therefore, since he was not God, Jesus Christ did not reveal God nor did he really save for only God can save. This, above all, was why Athanasius had to reject Arius as a heretic. Arius, in the end, did not believe that Jesus Christ really saved because he did not really believe that Christ was God. And if that be true, the Christian faith is dead, and doctrine is what was needed to defend the faith against a sentence of death. For that reasons, doctrine is important, extremely important.

In 325 AD, the bishops of the universal church came together at Nicea to settle the matter between Athanasius and Arius. The doctrine of Arius was declared a heresy and its proponents were excluded from the fellowship of the universal church. Further, in order to fortify the orthodox faith, the bishops took an existing Creed and inserted some phrases to establish the divinity of God the Son who eternally comes forth from the Father. That modified Creed became the Nicene Creed, said each Sunday by Anglicans and many other church bodies all over the world. It is a definitive Creed of the universal church, binding on all the faithful. The inserted phrases were the following: "eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father." All these phrases mean that the being who became incarnate in Jesus Christ was God. He was not a creature, but "eternally begotten of the Father," coming from God, "Light from Light" as brightness comes from the sun.

As a result of the foregoing it can be seen that the real difference between Arius and Athanasius was whether or not Jesus Christ was truly God. The divinity of the Holy Spirit was not at issue. Athanasius believed in the divinity of the Holy Spirit, but subsequent generations would further develop the understanding of the Spirit. In time, it was fully recognized that God was one, yet only one as three persons related by the eternally begetting of the Son and the procession of the Spirit. These new insights into the Holy Spirit were later included in the Nicene Creed, leading at last to the Creed we say today.

The deep intuition of the Arian heresy is that God is a sublime One, undivided by any inner distinctions. It fits nicely with another heresy, the docetic heresy. According to this heresy, the Son of God never really became incarnate in the man Jesus. Both heresies have an aversion to God becoming specific or distinct. For Arius, Father and Son were not distinct as God from each other in God. For docetism, God the Son never became a distinct person, the man Jesus, distinct as God from all other creatures. In what follows, I shall now present some of the claims currently made in the Episcopal Church and examine them in the light of the Arian heresy and related heresies.

One of the most important issues facing the church today is how to interpret Scripture. The opinion floats around that Scripture can be interpreted in a variety of ways, as if interpretation was dependent upon prejudices or fancy. How to interpret Scripture, however, was the very issue that separated Athanasius and Arius. Unlike Athanasius, Arius did not begin with an orthodox picture of God as given in the Creeds. Similarly, there are ways of interpreting Scripture proposed in the Church today that are not based on the doctrine of the Creed. I begin with several examples.

Three Examples of Heretical Biblical Interpretation

Recently, the Diocese of New York published an essay on how to interpret Scripture. There is a theology underlying their approach, and I have analyzed it elsewhere. Essentially, the New York essay envisions God as a divine One with one eternal plan for humanity. This plan is revealed in series of divine acts or revelations which take place in time. Since time is evolving, how the plan is applied evolves as well since God adapts the plan to every changing circumstances. At no point does God every fix his plan in words and deeds that have an eternal claim. This is because God's presence is "dynamic, vital and mobile," and therefore, God is "free to descend upon and depart from the holy habitation as he chooses." Since God never really fixes his revelation at one place and time, biblical moral norms can be seen as outmoded forms of God's law, a law that must be readapted to new circumstances resulting in new ways of living a moral life. "There is a certain relativism indeed an historical relativism implicit in the very idea of God's thousehold management" of the cosmos, and hence different circumstances may call for changed modes of obedience to the Word who speaks the same truth in a variety of adaptations for the sake of its utility to human creatures whose circumstances and understanding themselves change." The goal of this way of interpreting Scripture is to allow members of the Diocese of New York to continue live in homosexual relationships. In fact, the New York essay ends with a statement which essentially claims that very right.

Theologically, the New York way of understanding is modalistic in the sense that its authors do not distinguish between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit within God. As in Modalism, their God is an undivided One who does one thing reveal his one divine plan in an evolving cosmos. Nor, like Arius, do they believe that God the Word became incarnate in a particular individual, Jesus Christ, whose words and deeds have eternal validity. Rather, they believe that God is "dynamic, vital and mobile," and that he freely comes and goes upon the "holy habitation as he chooses." Scripture clearly teaches that Jesus Christ is the holy habitation of God, and therefore, the report insinuates that God was free to come and go upon Jesus as he willed. This clearly implies a form of "historical relativism" in Christ. The failure to distinguish between Father, Son, and Spirit within God, as well as the failure to establish their differing yet related works outside God, gives the New York essay modalistic. The failure to affirm Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God, something Athanasius would find blasphemous, makes it docetic.

Of course, the New York report never measures its underlying theology against orthodox doctrine. Had they done that, the marks of heresy would have been quite evident. In fact, compared to the ancient heresies, the heresies of the report are rather egregious and unsophisticated. Even so, for the unwary reader, the New York report seems sensible and compelling. In fact, it is scarcely possible to discover what is wrong with it unless it is seen in the light of orthodox doctrine. Without doctrine, the report makes sense, and that is the principle reason doctrine is so important in the church today. Without it, the church cannot distinguish truth from error, right from wrong interpretation, and for the most part, it doesn't.

William Countryman is professor of New Testament at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. His best known book is Dirt, Greed, and Sex. This text of completely devoid of significant doctrinal considerations. He simply claims that the laws governing sex in the Old Testament were aspects of purity and property law. Purity law is the Old Testament legislation that was used to separate Israel from the nations, such things as circumcision or not eating pork. Property law is the idea that one person can own another sexually. For example, fathers owned their daughters, and when they were sold to husbands, the husbands then had rights to them sexually as if they were property. According to Countryman, Jesus abolished both purity and property law and replaced both with the law of love. As a result, all sexual relations are possible as long as they are loving and harm no one. Therefore Countryman will say,

To be specific, the gospel allows no rule against the following, in and of themselves: masturbation, non-vaginal heterosexual intercourse, bestiality, polygamy, homosexual acts, or erotic art and literature. The Christian is free to be repelled by any or all of these and may continue to practice her or his own purity code in relation to them. What we are not free to do is impose our code on others. Like all sexual acts, these may be genuinely wrong where they also involve an offense against the property of another, denial of the equality of women and men, or an idolatrous substitution of sex for the reign of God as the goal of human existence.(4)

Athanasius would consider this vile beyond belief, and he would interpret Scripture quite differently than Countryman. In light of the tradition in which he stood, he interpreted Scripture as a narrative whole, understood as three inter related acts of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. First, God the Father created the heavens and the earth and created them good. In creation, Genesis one and two, God made the man and the woman for each other and sexuality was understood in that context. Countryman completely ignores Genesis one and two. After God made the creation good, sin entered the world and the human race was corrupted, and this resulted in a variety of sinful sexual desires. God then sent the law and the prophets as a first step in reforming the human race. For Athanasius, since Jesus Christ was God's eternal Word, each time God spoke it was Jesus Christ. For this reason, the giving of the Law and the Word spoken to the prophets was Jesus Christ in a hidden form. None of this is in Countryman because he wants to abolish the Law and the Prophets, especially the condemnation of homosexuality. Instead he wants to reduce everything to "love," apart from Law. What was dimly seen by figure and type in the Law and the Prophets came to fulfillment in Christ who fulfilled both. He did this by giving human beings a new heart, a heart that enabled them to keep the marriage covenant as first given in Genesis and honored in the Law. This is done by the inner work of the Spirit which makes real for believers what was accomplished in Christ. This is how Athanasius and the early church went about interpreting Scripture, and it is utterly alien to what we find in Countryman.

Once again, as in the case of the New York report, it is virtually impossible, apart from doctrine, to discover what is wrong with Countryman's interpretation of Scripture. Further, Countryman is a perfect example of the moral corruption that will devour the church as it continues to ignore doctrine.

In 1998, Cowely Press published a book on biblical interpretation entitled, Engaging the Word. This text, authored by Michael Johnston, is volume three in The New Church's Teaching Series, a teaching series devoted to teaching and defining the Christian faith for Episcopalians. At no point does this text ever measure its picture of God against orthodox doctrine. And for a very good reason the god it offers is a mystical pagan deity that includes within itself a pantheon of images, stories, feelings, and experiences, due to the fact that God and humanity mutually create each other. As Johnston puts it, "In this incarnational stance the divine and the human are both involved in the ongoing work of creation, so God makes us up as we go along as much as we make up God."

Along the way Johnston does the following: 1. He reduces the divine/human Word of God to a merely human story thereby robbing Scripture of its divine authority. 2. He then takes these human stories and claims they can be reassembled, with the result that each generation has the right to redefine the biblical text in light of its experience. 3. He isolates biblical texts from the whole of the biblical narrative, allowing modern readers to reconstruct them along new lines. 4. He ignores the supernatural power of God. 5. He defines ethics, not as binding commandments of God, but as abstractions progressively defined by the Church. 6. Finally, he does not believe that Jesus is definitively known in the apostolic witness of Scripture. Rather, he is "ultimately assembled out of the lives and hopes of believing communities and faithful individuals." All of this allows the Church to create Scripture in its own image rather than allowing the God of Scripture to create the Church in his image.

As in the case of Countryman and the Diocese of New York, it is virtually impossible, apart from doctrine, to know what is wrong with Johnston's way of interpreting Scripture. What is clear, however, is that if this way of interpretation prevails, it will eventually lead to the worship of a mystical pagan deity masquerading as the Christian God. Anyone having doubts about this is invited to read my essay to that effect.

I offer the above three examples of biblical interpretation because I am convinced that how Scripture is interpreted is one of the great issues facing the church today. In my view, a great deal of biblical exegesis in the Episcopal Church today is not done from an orthodox perspective. If one wants to read a contemporary theologian who interprets Scripture in light of orthodoxy, a perspective that would make sense to Athanasius, I would suggest reading Karl Barth. In my next three examples, I present theological issues directly pertinent to Athanasius and the defeat of Arianism.

The Arian Heresy in the Church Today

On Saturday, May 11, 1991, the Diocese of Maryland, meeting in convention in Timonium, Maryland, voted down a resolution affirming that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and that no one comes to the Father except by him (John 14:6). This is the great Truth that Athanasius fought so hard to preserve. When the Diocese of Maryland voted it down, they voted against the fundamental witness of Scripture, of the Creeds, of the common inheritance of the universal Church, the uniform witness of Anglicanism seen in the such diverse expressions as the English reformers, the Caroline Divines, the Evangelical revivalists, and the Tractarian fathers. The authors of this resolution brought their resolution to the convention floor because they were "convinced that the indispensable core of the apostolic and biblical Witness as defined by the historic Creeds and the ecumenical councils is now seriously imperiled in the Episcopal Church." The defeat of this resolution, and it probably would not pass in many other dioceses, indicates one simple fact: Athanasius and orthodoxy scarcely matter in the Episcopal Church.

Tilden Edwards is an Episcopal priest, the director of the Shalem Institute located near our nation's capital. His goal is to introduce people to God, to knowing God. As he understands it, God can be known directly in an experience in which the world, words, images, and sense of self dissolve into a unitive bliss in which the self becomes one with God. This understanding of God is not trinitarian, nor is it incarnational. For Edwards, one learns to leave images, self, and words behind in order to ascend into an eternal, formless, One without inner distinctions. Here is Edwards,

With the impetus of further grace (God's free, gifted movement in and among us), met with our consent, this unity of creation is deepened to its source in God. Our being in God is manifest. Our imagined substantive sense of self dissolves, and along with it our imagined sense of God. No longer is it a subject object relationship with God, but a subject subject relationship, so intimate and consuming as to 'know' no distinction (even though in reality a distinction remains). Now we become clear that contemplation is not an experience to be gained (there is no one left to 'gain' anything), but an eternal identity to be realized.(5)

As an Episcopalian, Edwards has to deal with Jesus Christ. He does so by saying that the deeds and words of Christ are the jumping off point from which one passes into the mystical One. In the end, he leaves the Word behind to enter the One beyond words and images. The discarded words and images would include the words and images of Christ as revealed in Scripture. For example, it is a matter of indifference to Edwards whether one begins to meditate by chanting the Hindu word "Om," or biblical names such as Abba or Yahweh, or Amma, a name for God as mother, or the name of Jesus, or any word for that matter, such as "Ah," as long as it is understood that one passes through these audible vibrations to the indivisible One which is God. In other words, one does not need any particular word by which to inter into God, and this would include not needing Jesus Christ the Word. The believer simply passes beyond the Word to the great One beyond language. In short, the distinction within God between the Father and Son is abandoned since the ultimate encounter is not three in one in which one knows the Father in the Son by the power of the Spirit, but one in one which leaves the Word behind. Further, the incarnation becomes unnecessary since one can enter into God from any and all points of creation.

Athanasius also believed he could know God. He does not think, however, that God can be known directly in an "eternal identity to be realized." In his view, without Christ, God is invisible and his Word cannot be heard. In Christ God becomes visible and audible, and when one knows this God, he is always known as the Son and the Father together as one God. Words and images are not left beyond, but are the means by which one knows the invisible Father in the visible Son. That is why Athanasius fought so hard against Arius. Arius thought he could know God without God becoming incarnate. Edwards also thinks he can know God apart from the incarnation. Athanasius did not believe this. For him, God is only known in incarnation, by means of the human nature of Jesus Christ. Athanasius ends four orations against Arius with these words,

He [Jesus Christ] was before invisible in heaven even to the celestial powers themselves, but now by the union of His invisible nature with the visible, made visible to all. He is visible, I say, not in His invisible Godhead, but by those manifestations of the Divinity, which are exhibited in the acts and operations of His human nature; and this human nature He has entirely renewed by receiving it into a personal union with Himself. All honour and adoration be therefore ascribed to Him, who was in the beginning, and is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.(6)

The spirituality of Edwards is common coin in the Episcopal Church. It flourishes because its doctrinal underpinnings are scarcely ever examined. Even if they were examined, this would mean little to many in ECUSA since doctrine scarcely matters in the Episcopal Church. But if that be true, does God really matter? Is it really possible to know the real God by chanting "Om," or is he uniquely revealed in Jesus Christ? Do we need doctrine here? Yes. Without Athanasius, without doctrine, the encounter with God will readily dissolve into a mindless mysticism.

In one of his columns in The Living Church, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church made the following comment,

How we all fit together, how our singularities are made sense of, how our divergent views and different understandings of God's intent are reconciled passes all understanding. All that we can do is to travel on in faith and trust, knowing that all contradictions and paradoxes and seemingly irreconcilable truths which seem both consistent and inconsistent with Scripture are brought together in the larger and all embracing truth of Christ, which, by Christ's own words, has yet to be fully drawn forth and known.(7)

What doctrine of God lies behind this quotation? In another essay, I uncovered and analyzed the theology that undergirds the Presiding Bishop's public statements. His thought does not neatly correspond to any of the ancient heresies, although it can probably be classed as a modification of the modalist heresy. The modalists considered the distinctions of Father, Son, and Spirit within God to be more apparent than real. Behind modalism lies the intuition of Arius, that ultimately, God is an undifferentiated One in which all distinctions fade away. Similarly, the Presiding Bishop does not distinguish between the Father who creates and the Son who redeems a corrupted creation. In his view, the incarnation is a symbol for the fact that God is incarnate in everything. This allows him to consider experience, the events and circumstances of life, as equal to the biblical revelation in Jesus Christ. In fact, he leaves the historical Jesus behind with the idea that revelation is unfolding and cumulative, something "yet to be fully drawn forth and known." In this view, Christ is a mystical "sky" or "cosmic ground," a "larger and all embracing truth" in which "all contradictions and paradoxes and seemingly irreconcilable truths, even those "which seem both consistent and inconsistent with Scripture." This view of Christ is directly at odds with Athanasius who believed that the human nature of Christ revealed God, and that in Christ God revealed himself as different from all other gods or truths. From the point of view of the Presiding Bishop, however, the truth of Athanasius can be reconciled with the heresy of Arius since both can be "brought together in the larger and all embracing truth of Christ." In light of orthodoxy, however, the theology of the Presiding Bishop spells the end of Christian Truth, of salvation, of ethics, and of the biblical revelation. I show this in the essay whose link is found at the start of this paragraph.

Conclusion

In conclusion, why do we need doctrine? Without doctrine the Church cannot rightly interpret Scripture, cannot rightly know the Savior Jesus Christ, cannot really know the God he reveals, cannot know how to live a moral life, and cannot avoid worshipping other deities disguised as Christian Truth. Doctrine is critical, important, and for that reason, Anglicans are among those Christians bodies who affirm doctrine each Sunday in the words of the Nicene Creed. By reciting the Creed, Anglicans affirm Athanasius and the defeat of heresy, as much now as then.

Endnotes

1. Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 43.
2. Young, pp. 44 5.
3. Saint Athanasius, The Orations of S. Athanasius Against the Arians, III,4.
4. William L. Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988, pp. 243 4.
5. Tilden Edwards, Living in the Presence. San Francisco: Harper, 1987, p. 5.
6. Saint Athanasius, The Orations of S. Athanasius Against the Arians.
7. "Glimpses of the Eternal Design," The Presiding Bishop's Column, September, 1998.