Introduction
"A Stone of stumbling and
a Rock of offense"
Faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ is the
foundation of our religious convictions. This faith gives
us spiritual strength, in-spires us to do good, and gives
direction to our efforts and to our expectations. Without
it Christianity loses its inspirational power and is
reduced to a collection of ancient myths and unfulfilled
promises.
Though of great importance, Christ’s divinity is not
self-evident. There are even some passages in the Gospels
which seem to contradict it. Therefore, those who dispute
the divinity of Christ have no difficulty in finding
biblical texts which supposedly support their opinion that
Jesus Christ was either a man or some incarnate spiritual
creature and therefore cannot be called God in the true
sense of the word. At the same time opponents of the faith
of the divinity of Christ point to the absence of biblical
texts in which Jesus called Himself God, and from this
they draw the incorrect conclusion that this title was
given to Him later.
Contradictory opinions concerning the nature of Christ
began to spring up from the very first days of
Christianity. Quite serious disputes and disturbances were
caused in the fourth century A.D. by the Arian heresy,
which taught that Jesus Christ was only a creature,
although the most perfect and powerful one ever created.
This heresy was thoroughly discussed by the First
Ecumenical Council which was held in the city of Nicaea in
325. The Fathers of this Council rejected arianism and
composed a Symbol of Faith, or Creed, in which, using very
precise statements, they expressed the true teaching
concerning Jesus Christ. This Creed has been used by the
Eastern Orthodox Church to this very day.
In our time the sect of Jehovah’s Witnesses has
resurrected the defeated Arian heresy from the dust of
history. Their variation of it teaches that Jesus Christ
is the incarnation of a spirit-son or an angel-like
creature (perhaps of the Archangel Michael). The danger
posed by the sect of Jehovah’s Witnesses comes from
the fact that they possess seemingly unlimited financial
reserves and thus flood the world with their literature
and their preachers. A particularly aggressive missionary
work is being carried on in Russia, where they have caught
thousands of trusting people in the nets of their cult.
