Scripture and God in Christianity

Christ. He taught that Jesus was merely a man from beneath and not one in substance with God.
The "Redeemer was by the constitution of his nature a man, who arose in time by birth; he was
accordingly "from beneath", but the Logos of God inspired him from above. The union of the
Logos with the man Jesus is to be represented as an indwelling by means of an inspiration acting
from without, so the Logos becomes that in Jesus which in the Christian is called by the Apostle
" the inner man"; ...the Logos dwelt in Jesus not " in substance but in quality".... Therefore the
Logos is to be steadily distinguished from Jesus; he is greater than the latter. Mary did not bear
the Logos, but a man like us in his nature, and in his baptism it was not the Logos, but the man,
was anointed with the Spirit. However, Jesus was, on the other hand, vouchsafed the divine
grace in a special degree, and his position was unique. Moreover, the proof he gave of his moral
perfection corresponded to his peculiar equipment. The only unity between two persons, accordingly
between God and Jesus, is that of the disposition and the will." 541
As Jesus advanced in the manifestation of goodness and submission to the will of God, he became
the "Redeemer and Savior of the human race, and at the same time entered into an eternally
indissoluble union with God, because his love can never cease. Now he has obtained from God,
as the reward of his love, the name which is above every name; God has committed to him the
Judgment, and invested him with divine dignity, so that now we can call him "God" [born] of
the virgin". So also we are entitled to speak of a pre-existence of Christ in the prior decree and
prophecy of God, and to say that he became God through divine grace and his constant manifestation
of goodness." 542 It is clear that Paul did not believe in the divine nature of Jesus. On the
other hand, in addition to his adoptionism, he sought to prove that the assumption that Jesus has
the divine nature or was by nature Son of God "led to having two gods, to the destruction of
Monotheism." 543 He became God but somehow, as says, Paul Tillich,"he had to deserve to become
God." 544 He banished from divine service all Church psalms that expressed in any sense the
essential divinity of Christ.
Paul was condemned at a Synod of Antioch held in 268, two earlier synods having failed to take
action in the matter. He was declared as heretical because he denied Jesus' pre-existence and his
unity of substance with God or in other words his proper divinity.
Though both types of Monarchianisms were condemned as heretical they, in different ways, challenged
and pushed the orthodoxy to look into the immense difficulties involved in their understanding
of the transcendence and unity of God and clarify it in intelligible terms. The orthodox
Fathers insisted upon their concept of relative unity of God by holding to their Logos Christology.
By the end of the third century the Logos Christology became generally accepted in all parts
of the church and found its place in most of the creeds framed in that period, especially in the
East. 545
Arianism:
Though the official Logos Christology, or belief in the divine nature of Jesus, disposed of the divine-human
doctrine of Dynamic Monarchianism, their doctrine did not pass without leaving a
trace. Lucian and Arius were inspired, as observes Harnack, "by the genius of Paul." 546 Arius, to
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