There is no mention here of any “Son from eternity.” The Son men-
tioned here was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
From the writings of the apostles the people of that church knew that
Jesus Christ was the true God ( 1 John 5 : 20 ); that all the fullness of divinity
dwelt physically in him (Colossians 2 : 9 ); that the apostles preached faith
in him (Acts 20 : 21 ); and that all power in heaven and on earth had been
given to him (Matthew 28 : 18 ).
How much trust should we put in councils when they do not go 176
directly to the God of the church? The church is the body of the Lord.
He is its head. What good is a body without a head? What kind of a
body has three heads, under whose direction the people constituting that
body develop plans and make decisions? Enlightenment is spiritual when
it comes from the Lord alone, who is the God of heaven and the church,
and who is also the God of the Word. When councils do not go directly
to God, enlightenment becomes more and more earthly and even mind-
lessly physical. Then if we catch a whiff of any genuine theological truth
in its inner form we immediately reject it from the thinking of our
rational mind like chaff tossed into the air from a winnowing basket. In
that case, false perspectives come in to replace the truth, and darkness
comes in instead of rays of light. Then we are standing in a cave with
glasses on our nose, candle in hand, closing our eyes to spiritual truths
that are in the light of heaven and opening them to input from the faint,
deceptive light of our physical senses. Later a similar thing happens when
we read the Word: our mind falls asleep to what is true and wakes up to
what is false. We become like the description of the beast from the sea:
we develop the mouth of a lion, the body of a leopard, and the feet of a
bear (Revelation 13 : 2 ).
There is a saying in heaven that when the Council of Nicaea fin-
ished, the followings things happened that the Lord had predicted to his
disciples:
The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light; the stars
will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
(Matthew 24 : 29 )In fact, the apostolic church had been like a new star appearing in the
sky. The church after the two Nicene councils was like the same star dim-
ming and disappearing (a phenomenon that has in fact happened several
times in the physical world, according to astronomers’ observations).
§176 the holy spirit & divine action 247