Well first of all, Dick Rubenstein (the author of the book to which you referred) as a Jew who by his own admission wrote his book because he was affected by the religious strife he saw as a child in his Jewish-Catholic neighborhood, is not exactly disinterested. He has a vested interest in discounting Christ’s deity. He is also no theologian, no Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic scholar and no church historian. He is merely a “Professor of Conflict Resolution,” hardly one with credentials sufficient to grant him status of “gospel writer.”
Secondly, your claim that the Church made changes in its view of Christ around the year 1500 is pure leftist trash, hogwash, horse-hockey. You haven’t a clue, pal. The controversy of which Rubenstein wrote occurred in the 4th century, not in the 16th. The scriptural texts were very near to being canonized by that time, and so any change to them on this issue would have been assaulted most vigorously.
Lastly, that most 4th century religious scholars rejected the deity of Christ is just plain false. Even Arius believed in Christ’s deity, but he argued that His divine status came to Him by adoption rather than by innate essence of character (as is the case with God the Father). Most scholars did not believe this prior to Arius, but it was increasingly debated in the eastern scholarly centers during the 4th century. The western church held to the teaching that the earliest Christians had believed from the beginning, that Christ is God, that He was with God from the very beginning and that He was God, as the scriptures declare (John 1:1).
The Eastern church introduced the “scholarly” notion that Christ was inferior to the Father and the struggle became essentially one of western thought against the East. Due to its scholarly force, Eastern thought almost prevailed but for the Church father Athanasius, who was a most vigorous champion for scriptural truth. The times were heady. Athanasius fell in and out of favor some five times before he finally vanquished Arius at Nicea. The Nicene creed said nothing new, nothing that could not be found in John 1:1, in Paul’s epistles, in Revelation. It merely codified what the Church had always believed, that Christ never became God, but that He was God from the very beginning (John 1:1). |
