
In 325 AD, the Council of Nicea was faced with the responsibility of determining the accuracy or inaccuracy of the Arian teachings concerning Christ. They ruled it a heresy. The arguments presented by Athanasius were primarily drawn from Scripture—as were, oddly, the mistaken arguments presented by Arius. The debate itself demonstrates something that has been shown again and again—that the very nature of theological development is that doctrines are tested in the crucible of crisis. It is not that councils or tradition decides what is true, but that crises force us to the Word, where we find clear answers to all of our questions. Out of Nicea arose a clearer understanding of what the Sonship of Christ means, and what it does not mean. And that discussion set the stage for the later clear definition of the Trinity.
Between 1910 and 1915, 64 authors wrote 94 essays defending the faith against the onslaught of Modernism. This series, The Fundamentals, was a series of articles, a series of addresses, and finally, a 12-volume book series. On your own bookshelves most of you who are serious students of the Word will find books that outline the doctrines of the Faith.
Abraham Lincoln observed, the “dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.” The history of Theology, particularly the Modernist onslaught of the late 1800s and early 1900s was anything but quiet, but we would be foolish to think that we are in a quiet period, and that the lists of doctrines so thoroughly defined at that time to combat the forces of Theological Liberalism are well-defined enough to face all the challenges of today.