She is either denying the deity of Jesus or elevating believers to deity. She goes on later to say in a CNN interview that she affirms the Nicene Creed. But saying you do doesn’t actually mean that you do. I wonder if she even understands the Arian heresy the Council of Nicaea was called to address?
On Thursday night, NBC Nightly News showed a tweet by Dr. Russell Moore, leader of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, calling the leading religious figure in Donald Trump’s life, Paula White, a heretic. The NBC reporter asked White, “Do you think it is because you are a woman?” “No,” I loudly replied. “It’s because she’s a heretic!” But, of course, no one could hear me in my living room.
Interestingly, the same day, I listened to a free lecture from Reformed Theological Seminary from theirHistory of Christianity I class . I’ve been working through this class on their free app, and Thursday’s lecture was on the Council of Nicaea which produced the Nicene Creed. For many of us, the word heretic is simply a pejorative term. But among the church fathers in the history of Christianity, it had a specific meaning, that someone was teaching a belief in the name of Christ that didn’t match orthodox Christian faith.
But here we have another word, orthodox. What does it mean?
Orthodoxy (from Greek ὀρθοδοξία, orthodoxia – “right opinion”) is adherence to correct or accepted creeds, especially in religion. In the Christian sense the term means “conforming to the Christian faith as represented in the creeds of the early Church”.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodoxy
It’s been interesting to study the history of Christianity and the development of the creeds by the early church fathers to combat heresies. The primary ones were around the nature of the Trinity and particularly around the nature of Christ. The more you study it, the more you get how concerning the debate last year over Eternal Subordination of the Son was in terms of the orthodox Christian faith. As a result of this class and that debate, I’ve been using a more discriminating eye as I evaluate what books I do and don’t recommend. For a time, I used some books by conservative men and women whom I now recognize as being fuzzy on the Trinity in a way that would have concerned the church fathers. Because these authors were conservative on gender, I mistakenly assumed they held closely to conservative orthodox faith. But I have found that is often not the case.
I have also met more women equally burdened as I for discipling women in the faith of our fathers, understanding how Scripture led early church fathers to affirm old creeds and how those should still constrain us for today. These women believe that an orthodox understanding of the Trinity and nature of Christ are essential doctrines for Christian women, and their writing and teaching affirm these doctrines.
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