Bible Stories

The fathers’ ways of thought and speech about God were overhauled and upgraded in the thirteenth century by Thomas Aquinas. There are three basic principles in Thomas’s theism:

• God is essentially the act of his own existence, pure and simple. God, we might say, is in no respect a passive principle or static essence, but eternally exists as total, inexhaustible, personal energy — a living God, actively forming and ordering everything in his world.

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Dangerous denials

Early in the fourth century. Arius taught that the Father alone was true God. This denial of Christ’s true deity was countered by councils of church leaders at Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381), and by great theologians such as Athanasius. The Nicene Creed was the product of these synods. At last the Church established that the Son was as fully divine as the Father. Like Irenaeus in the second century, Athanasius showed how the hope of salvation depended on Christ’s being true God as well as true man. The Christian could confidently trust Jesus Christ for salvation, because he was none other than God himself, ‘who became man for us men and for our salvation‘. No one less than God could restore us to fellowship with God. Read more