1. Heresies against the Dogma of The Trinity The Nicene Creed

2. God is one but not Solitary Heresies against the Trinitarian dogma are either collective or personal: – Collective: Sabillian – Personal: Arius, Macedoniuos.

3. Major Heresies against the Trinitarian dogma 1.Sabilian heresy: The Trinity are but one person/hypostasis who appeared under three names and used three masks - 2.The Arian heresy: The Son is created being, not equal to the Father. 3.The Macedonian heresy: the Holy Spirit is created force

4. Church Responses 1.Sabilian heresy: council of Constantinople – Pope Timothy 2.Arian heresy: council of Nicene 325 - St Athanasius – “Homousius” – the first part of the creed 3.Macedonian heresy: Council of Constantinople – Pope Timothy - the second part of the creed

5. Returning heresies The Sabilian heresy: Unitarian churches The Arian heresy: Jehovah's witness The Macedonian heresy: Jehovah's witness

6. Unitarianism Unitarianism is a heretical movement named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism, which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially in one being.

7. Creation is the work of the Holy Trinity “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth” Genesis 1:1 The verb “create”- Hebrew, bara, always has God for its subject. It is not used for anybody else “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God… all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made” John 1:1-3 “All things were created, in heaven and on earth… all things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.” Col 1:16-17 That’s why the Church affirms “By Him all things were made” in the Creed

8. The Father created the world by His Son (the Wisdom of God) “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I have been established from everlasting, from the beginning, before there was ever an earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no fountains abounding with water… When He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him as a master craftsman; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in His inhabited world, and my delight was the with the sons of men.” Proverbs 8:22-31 Creation is the work of the Holy Trinity

9. The Father creates everything by His Son and His Spirit “by His Spirit He adorned the heavens” Job 26:13 “You send forth Your Spirit, they are created” (bara) Psalm 104:30 “by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth” Psalm 33:6 The Father made all things by His Word and by His Wisdom “by the Son and the Spirit” Who, so to speak, are “His Hands” The creation is the common work of the Holy Trinity

10. Challenging responses to Christian faith regarding the origins Pantheism: everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (He’s growing) Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God, and returning to Him. Dualism, Manichaiesm: the existence of 2 eternal principles, good and evil, light and darkness, locked in permanent conflict

11. Creation is the work of the Holy Trinity Gnosticism: it is one of the concepts of dualism. The world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind Deism: the world was made by God, but as by a watchmaker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself Materialism: reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed Scientific Realism: At the most general level, the view that the world described by science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be