There is no evidence proving the church “doctored” the Scriptures to support the deity of Christ. There were many forgeries floating around during the 4th century Arian controversy, but they were easily identified as forgeries because of earlier textual witnesses. The Rev. 1:11 reference found in the later Textus Receptus and not in other manuscripts does not jaundice belief in the divine nature of Christ because the teaching is quite clearly affirmed in Rev. 1:8, 1:17, 2:8, 21:6 and 22:13, all of which are found in the earliest texts.
The teaching of Christ’s deity is also found in the fourth Gospel, wherein it is quite clearly declared that Christ is the Logos, Who in the beginning was with God and was God, by Whom all things were made. That teaching exists in the earliest manuscripts.
The apostle Paul also taught the divinity of Christ in his epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians. The teaching is present in all of the earliest texts.
We also find the teaching in extra-biblical writings, proving that not only did the very first Christians believe it, but also that later catholicizing Christians accepted it. We find it in the Letters of Ignatius and also in Pliny’s writings, where he records that early Christians chanted hymns to Christ as God.
The church from the very beginning acknowledged Christ as God because of the clear teaching of the scriptural texts, recorded from the apostles. The issue did not become a matter of controversy until the 4th century because the church rarely, if ever, dwelled on so abstract an issue as the relationship between matter and Spirit. That discussion started in the Eastern Church due to its tendency to rationalize the mystery of a Human-Diety union, a tendency that arose because the scholarly centers of the known world at the time existed chiefly in such places as Alexandria and Antioch. Arius was of the Eastern tradition and was very influential in the school at Alexandria. |
