Friday, February 6, 2009

What the Church Fathers say? ( Athanasius )

Athanasius contribution to Christianity is the explanation that there is a relationship among the Trinity.
John Piper got it right when he wrote "The relationships between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit had not received formal statement in any representative council before the time of Athanasius.(http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Biographies/1532_Contending_for_Our_All/)
In the same article John Piper also qoutes from the famous work of Athanasius On the Incarnation of the Word. This words affirm the teaching of the early church that Jesus incarnation is for ALL people and not just for few.
Here is the quote from John Piper ...

the deity of the incarnate Son of God is essential because the gospel of our salvation is essential. There is no salvation if Jesus Christ was not God. It’s true that Athanasius deals with salvation mainly in terms of restoring the image of God in man by Christ’s taking human nature into union with the divine nature. But Athanasius does not emphasize this to the exclusion of the death of Christ and the atonement. You hear both in this passage from On The Incarnation of the Word:

For the Word, perceiving that no otherwise could the corruption of men be undone save by death as a necessary condition, while it was impossible for the Word to suffer death, being immortal, and Son of the Father; to this end He takes to Himself a body capable of death, that it, by partaking of the Word Who is above all, might be worthy to die in the stead of all, and might, because of the Word which was come to dwell in it, remain incorruptible, and that thenceforth corruption might be stayed from all by the Grace of the Resurrection. Whence, by offering unto death the body He Himself had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from any stain, straightway He put away death from all His peers by the offering of an equivalent. For being over all, the Word of God naturally by offering His own temple and corporeal instrument for the life of all satisfied the debt by His death. And thus He, the incorruptible Son of God, being conjoined with all by a like nature, naturally clothed all with incorruption, by the promise of the resurrection.”

FROM :http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Biographies/1532_Contending_for_Our_All/

Hmm... does John piper really believes in limited atonement ( just asking...)


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