Fatina Richards
CH 500
Based on the material provided and our team discussion regarding why doctrinal purity is important for the modern church, I would like to summarize all that I’ve learned.
Church Fathers helped bring Christianity into adulthood. Then we had the Apologist that were very bright and gifted and publicly defended our faith. The early church became scattered when the doctrine of faith began to get altered, brought about confusion, and individuals lost sight of pure doctrine. We had the errors denying Christ’s human element, which were Docetism, and Appolonarism. We had errors denying the divine element, which were Ebionism, Arianism, and Adoptionism. We had the errors denying the unity of the person embracing two natures, which were Nestorianism, and Eutychianism. Last we had the errors denying distinctions in the Godhead, which was Sabellianism. All which were false doctrine teachings. One of my teammates said, that it seems even in the 300’s the enemy was constantly at work trying to discredit God, and that dissenting beliefs often lead to splinters in the faith.
The problems of the doctrine began to get out of hand when Arius decided that he learned enough about God and his beliefs to branch off and make some noise about his own beliefs. Arius brought his beliefs before the council of Nicaea, which voted that Jesus is the Son of God, and that the Trinity is one from the same substance.
Doctrinal purity is important for today’s church because the church is built upon the foundation of truth, and without truth the church would be without it’s foundation. A teammate states that it’s important because the church is the collective representation of Jesus in the world. We are the body of Christ. We can apply everything we learned this week by utilizing the 3 C’s in our daily life ministry. Core Identity would be establishing a relationship with God for ourselves and really know and understand the word of God, so...