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Explanation of the Orthodox Creed (One God)

Explanation of the Orthodox Creed (One God) 

Objective:

God is One; understand the attributes of God and the work of the Father

References:

v  “Trinitarianism and Monotheism,” a sermon delivered by H. H. Pope Shenouda III
v  “A simplified interpretation of the Orthodox Creed,” Anba Gregorious
v  “Our Holy Faith,” Anba Youannis
v  “Interpretation of the Orthodox Creed,” Sermons delivered by Anba Bemin
v  “The Trinity we believe in,” Mofid Kamel
v  “Truly we believe,” Fr. Moussa Wahba
v  “We believe in One God,” Fr. Moussa Wahba

Memory Verse:

“The Lord our God is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4).

Introduction:

      The soldier who marches at the head of an army of fighters carries the flag and raises it to fix it at the highest spot. He may be wounded; he may die and become a martyr. In case this happens, another soldier succeeds in raising the flag and declaring victory. Similarly, our faith came to us through the saints’ struggle and the martyrs’ blood.
      The main part of the Orthodox Creed was set by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. There were 318 Bishops who attended that Council; Pope Alexandros with St. Athanasius the Apostolic (who was a deacon at the time) represented the Coptic Church. The Council was held to discuss the Arian heresy. Arius claimed that Christ was not the Everlasting Son of God, but that He was created as any other man. Pope Alexandros did his best to bring Arius back to the correct faith, but Arius would not be convinced.
      Emperor Constantine attended the first meeting of the Council. St. Athanasius defended the Godhead of Christ and succeeded in having the Council’s agreement to issue a creed to excommunicate Arius and dismiss him. Then he composed the Orthodox Creed till the beginning of the phrase “Yes, we believe in the Holy Spirit.”
      In AD 381, the Second Ecumenical Council, the Council of Constantinople, was held because Macedonius denied the Godhead of the Holy Spirit, so the Council added the Second part of the Orthodox Creed.
      Therefore, the Orthodox Creed was set by two Councils, the Council of Nicene in AD 325 and the Council of Constantinople in AD 381.

Lesson Outline:

I. One God

      God is one and has no partner. We do not believe in three gods; we say, “In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God.” If there were two gods, who would be greater and who would have come before the other? If they were equal, each one would possess half the kingdom! How can a limited being be a god? God is one Essence. The statement “The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” does not mean that they are three gods, but they are three hypostases of One Essence. And the Essence of God is Love.
A. An example
v  Man is mind, body and soul; he is still one person, not three persons.
v  The sun is disc, ray and heat; it is still one sun.
B. Other evidence that God is one
      There are countless verses that clearly prove that God is One. The following are some of the Scripture verses:
v  “The Lord our God is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4).
v  “There is none holy like the Lord …There is none besides thee” (1 Samuel 2:2).
v  “For who is God but the Lord” (2 Samuel 22:32).
v  “I am the First and I am the Last, besides Me there is no god” (Isaiah 44:6).
v  “For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is God), who formed the earth and made it. I am the Lord, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:18).
v  “There is none good but one, that is God” (Mathew 19:17).
v  “Hear O Israel, our God is one Lord” (Mark 12:29).
v  “It is One God” (Romans 3:30).
v  “There is none other God but one... But to us there is but One God” (1 Corinthians 3:20).
v  “God is One” (Galatians 3:20).
v  “Thou believe that there is one God” (James 2:19).
      God reveals Himself. The Lord spoke to Adam and gave him a commandment. Adam heard the Lord’s voice walking in the garden. The Lord spoke to Noah, saved him and rescued his family from certain death. He revealed Himself to Abraham, tested him and blessed him. It is He who gave Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount of Sinai, and the mountain was burning with fire and smoke.
      The Divine voice was also heard when Christ was baptized in the Jordan; He said, “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased” (Mathew 3:17).

II. The Attributes of the Father

1.      His Existence is a must. The Existence of God is necessary in order to understand the universe. “For in Him we live, and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
2.      He has no end. He is not confined to a certain place. He is boundless. “Thou art the same and Thy years have no end” (Psalm 102:27).
3.      He is a Simple Spirit. He has no flesh. “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).
4.      God does not change. “Man changes but God does not change.” The Lord says, “For I the Lord do not change” (Malachi 3:6).
5.      God is everlasting and eternal. He has no beginning and has no end. The Lord says, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending” (Revelations 1:8).
6.      God exists everywhere. He is present everywhere. No place can confine Him.
7.      God knows everything. “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:13)
8.      God is Almighty; “Whatever the Lord pleases He does in heaven and on earth in the seas and all deep places” (Psalm 135:6).

III. The Work of the Father

A. Fatherhood and choice
      Fatherhood is one of the attributes of God the Father. He is our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Father of humanity, and that is why we call Him God the Father. He created us, and He cares for us.
      Sparrows are without number, but each one of them does not fall to the earth without the will of God who is in Heaven. He also cares for the plants; He clothes them in a way that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed. However, God cares more for man.
B. Why does God let his children suffer?
      God created man on the sixth day, after He had provided him with all his needs. He also gave him a perfect, accurate and beautiful body. He gave him an eternal soul, mind and intelligence.
      Sufferings in our lives are due to our sensitive, advanced nature. Our feeling of pain distinguishes us from inanimate things. Sufferings make us escape to a better life. Some sufferings are the outcome of our behavioral mistakes and others are due to God’s purpose, which we do not know (for example, consider the man who was born blind).
C. Choice
      Because God is a Father, He chooses His beloved. This choice is according to man’s heart and its preparedness and response to the Divine Will. He chose us to be His children, and this was a special call to us because we believed in Him. The scripture says:
i) Pre-destination:
v  “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that be might be the first born among many brethren” (Romans 8:29).
ii) The Call:
v  “And those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified” (Romans 8:30).
iii) Our choices:
v  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love” (Ephesians 1:3,4).

IV. The Almighty God

      God is our supporter. He opens and no one shuts. He shuts and no one opens. The sun rises in its appointed time. Stars do not sleep. Planets do not collide. There are laws which control the universe. These laws are so accurately set by the Lord that scientists find it difficult to discover their details. The Lord controls the universe.
      “The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.” (Psalm 121:5-8).
      “How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33).
      The Lord also protects our lives from dangers, lusts and deviations.

V. He Created the Heaven and the Earth

      Consider the wonderful nature which we see and its beauty which we enjoy. When we see a lovely thing, we utter the name of God. The existence of a thing indicates that someone has made it, and if that thing is perfect, we say that its maker has a great ability and skill. There are also the invisible creatures which we cannot see, such as the atoms and electrons which run through wires; we only feel their effects. There are also the remote stars and the tiny microbes. The greatness and majesty of God are beyond our thoughts. There are also the spiritual invisible creatures such as angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim that are without number. Ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands praise God, but we do not see them. Those creatures help us. Man is as a tiny drop in a big ocean, but the Lord cares for him as if that entire big universe had been made for man.
v v v
The Creed
By H. H. Pope Shenouda III
A Foreword:
      The main facts of faith as stated in the Creed have existed since olden times. Christians lived these facts of faith in the first three generations. Some of these facts were included in the laws of the apostles, the laws of Apollides, and in some sayings of the fathers. The important thing about the Creed is that all the churches of the Christian world did believe in one faith adopted by them all. Therefore, it was necessary that the said Creed be validated by an ecumenical council formed from representatives of all the churches in the world.
      One Creed has been formulated by the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in the year 325 A.D. The Council of Nicaea is the first ecumenical council which refuted the Arian Heresy that denied the Godhead of Christ. The Coptic Church was represented in this council by Pope Alexander, the nineteenth patriarch of Alexandria, accompanied with his deacon Athanasius, who formulated all the items of the Creed. The Creed’s part on the Godhead of the Holy Spirit was added by the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople held in 381 A.D. to refute Macedonius' heresy, which denied the Godhead of the Holy Spirit.
      All the churches of the world, even though they disagree concerning some beliefs, do believe in all the items of the Creed. Furthermore, any denomination that does not believe in the Creed as a whole cannot be considered Christian, such as Jehovah Witnesses and the Sabbatarians, who believe in the Two Testaments of the Holy Bible (according to their own translation) but do not believe in all Christian beliefs included in the Creed.
The Creed includes the following main facts of the faith:
1.      The Unity of God; the Creed starts with the words “Truly we believe in One God”
2.      The Holy Trinity, the Godhead and the role of each
3.      The Incarnation, Redemption, and Salvation
4.      Baptism for the remission of sins
5.      The Resurrection of the dead and the life to come in eternity
6.      The Second Coming of Christ for judgment
7.      The One Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church
“Truly We Believe:”
      Faith includes belief, trust, conviction and complete acceptance with the mind and heart. St. Paul the Apostle defined faith as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). We believe in miracles for example, though they are against reasonableness and above the level of the intellect. The mind can find no explanation for a miracle, except that God works it; therefore one accepts it without understanding it.
      In our daily lives, consider as an example the new scientific inventions. Many of these inventions are accepted only by some people, while the majority cannot understand or comprehend them. One cannot, for instance, understand what electricity or telecommunication is, but one accepts it without thinking. Not everyone knows how a computer works, but it’s accepted.
      Faith does not contradict the intellect but is above its level. All of us believe that the spirit is the cause of man's life, without seeing it. The mind accepts the fact that when the spirit departs from someone, he dies. But the mind does not know what the spirit is or any of the details about it, such as its form, its ability to know things, or its destiny. However, we accept what faith tells us about it.
      Likewise, the resurrection of the bodies is a matter accepted by faith; the mind does not know how it is perfected or how the bodies come to life after being turned to dust. We cannot know this, and it is not important to understand but rather to accept this by faith.
      The mind accepts what faith presents to us. Faith brings us to a higher level than the intellect, and then the mind deals with the matter and explains it. These matters which are beyond the intellect are received in faith from inspiration or from the Holy Scriptures, as God spoke to the prophets.
      “Truly we believe...” It is not mere faith we inherited from our fathers or mothers, who were believers, but we truly believe with conviction in our hearts and with all truth.
      Faith requires a humble heart, acceptance and simplicity. Some people have their minds developed, and they lose the simplicity of faith! A child believes because he has not yet attained the degree of doubt that makes one inquire about everything and argues everything. If you teach a child to pray, he will pray with you and will speak to God in his prayer, without asking you who that God is to whom he speaks and does not see. That is why I am amazed at the Protestants who refuse to baptize children because they are not yet believers! Would that they have the faith of children!
      It is strange indeed that the mind develops against faith, and the more it develops, the more it doubts and argues. It is good therefore to implant the basics of faith in the mind of the child very early, for the faith of the child is more powerful than his intellect, or in other words, more developed.
      A mind which is wholly intellect, without faith, is poor indeed. Once, an atheist philosopher was passing by a farm and saw a farmer kneeling down and raising his hands towards heaven, praying very zealously. The philosopher was astonished and said to himself, “I am ready to give up my philosophy to anyone who can give me such faith as that of the simple farmer, who was speaking to an invisible being with all zeal and from all his heart!!”
      Truly we believe ... in what?
“We believe in One God:”
      We believe in the Holy Trinity but as being One God. We say, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, Amen."
      Believing in One God is the first of the Ten Commandments. The Lord says, "I am the Lord your God... You shall have no other gods before Me" (Ex. 20: 2, 3) (Deut. 5: 6, 7). Many other verses on the unity of God are found in the Book of Isaiah the Prophet such as: "I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me" (Is. 43: 10, 11). [See also (Is. 44: 6, 9) (Is. 46: 9) (Is. 48: 12)].
      The New Testament speaks also about the unity of God. St. John the apostle says, "For there are three who bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one" (1 Jn. 5: 7). And St. James the apostle says, "You believe that there is one God, You do well. Even the demons believe - and tremble!" (Jas. 2: 19). The apostle refers here to the intellectual faith, not the inner, actual faith. One who does not believe in One God is lower in faith than the devils! And the Lord Jesus Christ said, "Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 28: 19). He said “in the name,” not “in the names.”
      We do not believe in the plurality of God, but in One God. One may ask how the three can be one! According to mathematic rules 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, not 1, but we say that according to the same rules 1x1x1=1, not 3. The Son says, "The Father is in Me, and I in Him" (Jn. 10: 38) and, "I and My Father are one" (Jn. 10: 30). We are not polytheists; we believe in no other gods.
      The Holy Trinity does not mean plurality of gods but means peculiarities of the One Godhead. God is Being, Intellect and Spirit. With the intellect and the Spirit, God is One Being. The man created in God's image is a being with intellect and spirit, and the three are one. Likewise, the fire with the heat and light, coming out of it, are one. The sun is also one with its heat and light.
      The Father is the Godhead; the Son is the utterance of God's intellect or the wise word of God, God's wisdom (7 Cor. 23, 24). The Holy Spirit is God's Spirit. God and His Spirit are one, and God and His intellect are one; and the three are One.
      Those who believe in the plurality of gods are against reason in understanding the Godhead. If there are many gods, one of them will be more powerful; this one will be god and the other two will not be gods. If the three have the same power, each of them will be bound by the power of the other two; in other words, each of them will have power over all other beings, except those that belong to the other two gods. In this way, none of them will be God since none of them is omnipotent.
      The same can be said with regard to creation. If there were many gods, who will be the creator? If one of them is, he will be god and all creation will be ruled by him, since he is the creator; the others will not be gods. If this creator has created all beings, has he created the other gods? If so, they will not be gods. If not, his power to create will be bound by the other gods, and if it’s bound and limited, he will not be god.
      If we apply the same reasoning to the other divine attributes, we will have an inevitable reasonable result, which is to believe in One God.
      “We believe in One God ... God the Father.”
God the Father:
      The Creed speaks about each Person (hypostasis) of the Holy Trinity separately, starting with the Father.
      God the Father is the Father in the Holy Trinity, and the Father of all who believe in Him. He is the Godhead not seen by anyone, as St. John said, “No one has seen God at anytime. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him" (Jn. 1: 18). We cannot see the Father, but we can see Him in His incarnate Son, who came in the likeness of men (Phil. 2: 7, 8).
      It was the Son who appeared in the Old Testament because no one has seen the Father. Some may wrongly think that God made us His children in the New Testament only, while in the Old Testament He was only a Lord, not a Father. But this is wrong. In the Old Testament, God declared Himself as Father also, as He says in the Book of Isaiah the prophet, "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me" (Is. 1: 2). And those who believed in Him addressed Him as Father: "O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter..." (Is. 64: 8). Before the story of the Flood, it is written, "The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful" (Gen. 6: 2). The sons of Seth were called the sons of God in order to distinguish them from the offspring of Cain, whose daughters were called the daughters of men. And in the Proverbs, God says, "My son, give Me your heart" (Prov. 23: 26).
      In the Old Testament, God was Lord and Father, and in the New Testament, He was also so. His relationship with mankind never changes. However, God's Fatherhood to us differs from His Fatherhood to the Son within the Holy Trinity, as we shall explain when speaking about the Only-Begotten Son.
      Since God is our Father who treats us as His children, we also should treat Him as Father, with all love, respect and obedience. He is Father, and He made us children when He gave us the birth of the Water and the Spirit "through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit" (Tit. 3: 5).
      He is God the Father, the Almighty.
The Almighty:
      He governs all the creation; nothing is out of His control and dispensation. All creation includes the heavenly and the earthly, whether rational or irrational; all are under His control. The creation includes also the angels and the devils.
      God, out of His extreme mercy and compassion, granted us a free will. By this free will we can obey or disobey His commandments. All our works are under His control, written before Him in a book of remembrance (Mal. 3: 16). We must give an account for them when He comes to reward each one according to his works (Mark 16: 27). He may judge us while we’re on earth; the scriptures mention many examples of punishment inflicted by God, such as the punishment by the Great Flood (Gen. 6), the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19), the punishment of Korah, Dathan and Abiram (Num. 16), the punishment of Pharaoh with many plagues, then by drowning in the Red Sea (Ex. 16), and furthermore, the punishment inflicted by God upon His beloved who sin, such as the punishment of David (2 Sam. 12).
      The Devil is not the god of evil, for he is only one of God's creations, under the control of God the Almighty.  If God wills to stop the devil's activity or put limits to it, God can do that. In the story of Job the Righteous, the devil takes permission to tempt Job and within certain limits. In the first temptation, God gave power to the devil over Job's property and household, and the devil could not go beyond that level (Job 7). In the second temptation, God permitted the devil to touch Job's body but to spare his life (Job 2: 6), and the devil obeyed. And in the story of the Legion, the devils begged the Lord to send them to the swine that they may enter them, and the Lord permitted them (Mk. 5: 12, 13). This shows that the devil had no power, even to enter the swine, without God's permission.
      In Revelation, God sent His angel and bound Satan for a thousand years, after which Satan would be released from his prison (Rev. 20: 2, 7). The Lord gave His disciples power over the unclean spirits to cast them out (Mt. 10: 1). And the seventy disciples were joyful and said, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name" (Lk. 10:17). We also are given by the Lord the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy (Lk. 10: 19). Enemy here means Satan. Hence, we should not fear Satan since he is under the control of God the Almighty.
      Someone may ask, “If God is the Almighty, why do all these troubles and damages happen in the universe?” Jeremiah the Prophet asked a similar question; he said, “Righteous are You O Lord, when I plead with You; yet let me talk with You about Your judgments. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously?” (Jer. 12:1) And similarly Gideon asked the angel of the Lord, “O my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” (Jud. 6: 13)
      We think that the Lord probably has some purpose for that: to give some a blessing out of the temptation or the gift of forbearance. But certainly, when He permits some temptations to befall us, He is with us in that temptation, as in the case of Joseph the Righteous.
      Here we say that there is a difference between God's intent and God's permission. God's intent is ultimately good; however, He gives rational creatures power to act within limits. They may behave in a wrong way and cause harm, but all this happens by God’s permission; and all the time, God, being the Almighty, observes, charges, punishes, corrects and sometimes shows long-suffering.
      God may also interfere and stop the work of the wicked. Therefore, the free will given to the wicked is not open but rather under the control of the Almighty, to whom David and his companions once cried out saying, “O Lord, I pray, turn the counsel of Ahitophel into foolishness” (2 Sam. 15. 31). And God interfered many times to save His saints from the counsel of the wicked. Therefore David sang, admitting this, "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when men rose against us, then they would have swallowed us alive... Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth" (Ps. 124: 2).
      God interfered and saved David from the plots of King Saul, and saved Mordecai from the conspiracy of Haman (Est. 7: 10). God saved the whole Church from the Roman Empire; many other examples of God's interference to stop the plots of the wicked can be found in the Holy Bible and history.
      God permits oppression but spares not the oppressor. The Lord judges for the oppressed. He permitted King Saul to do injustice to David, but Saul did not escape God's punishment, for he and his sons were killed on Mount Gilboa. They even cut off Saul's head, stripped off his armor and fastened his body to the wall of Beth Shan (7 Sam. 31: 8-10). Absalom also did injustice to his father David, and he did not escape God's punishment. In the battle, his head was caught in the thick boughs of a great terebinth tree, and Joab thrust three spears through his heart while he was still alive. Then the young men who bore Joab's armor surrounded Absalom, struck and killed him (2 Sam. 18: 9-15). God permitted Cain to attack his brother Abel and kill him. But Cain did not escape punishment. He was cursed by God and went as a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth (Gen. 4: 8-14). If we also read about Church persecutors, we will be amazed. No one escapes God's control and knowledge. No one escapes the Almighty's power, judgment and punishment.
      God controls everything, not only the actions but also the thoughts and intents. God controls even the embryo in his mother's womb. He controls the invisible as well as the visible, the things that can be seen and those that cannot. Therefore, do not be sad for whatever afflictions you undergo. God will certainly interfere and judge justly on the earth; He will judge for the oppressed. He punished Ahab and Jezebel for killing Naboth the Jezreelite (l Kgs.21).
      However, God prevented many afflictions, tribulations, temptations and damages. He stopped them before coming to us, without our knowledge. Regretfully, we thank God only for the visible troubles from which He saves us but do not thank Him for preventing the invisible troubles before reaching us - troubles which might be more numerous and are stopped by God the Almighty.
      The temptations and troubles which God permits to befall us may fulfill the words of the Holy Bible: "All things work together for good to those who love God" (Rom. 8: 28), or "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials” (Jas. 1:2).
      If you know that God is the Almighty, you will know that He does not only control what happens to you, but also what happens from you. He reads your thoughts, examines your heart, and knows your intents and your feelings. Nothing is hidden from him. He said to one of the angels of the seven churches "I know your works" (Rev. 2, 3). If you know all this, you will feel ashamed for every sinful act you do or every thought within you, which God knows. You will feel ashamed from God the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth.
The Creator of heaven and earth:
      The word "Creator" is an attribute of God alone. He creates from the non existent.
      The farthest extent a human mind can reach is to be a maker, not a creator. Indeed, man, with utmost intelligence and knowledge, who built space ships and reached the moon, and who excelled to a great extent in technology, is nevertheless just a maker and not a creator. Whatever he invents is made from the material created by God. Man made everything with the mind which God created in him.
      So when we prove that the Lord Christ has created all things, we are in fact proving His divinity because no one but God is Creator.
      But who created this universe (Gen. 1,2)? Is it the Father or the Son? The Father created everything through the Son. Since the Son is God's uttering mind or rational utterance, and since He is God's wisdom and God's power (1 Cor. 1: 23, 24), we can say that God created everything through His mind, His utterance, His Word, His wisdom, or in other words through the Son. This is what St. Paul the Apostle says about the Son: “Through whom also He made the worlds (Heb l:2); "All things were created through Him and for Him (Col. 1:16). And St. John, in beginning of his gospel, said, “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (Jn. 1:3). Is He not God’s uttering mind? God and His mind are one!
      If you had a certain problem and you solved it, would it be you, or your mind, which solved it? You solved it, your brain solved it, and you solved it with your brain.
      Since God has created everything, then everything is in His power, and of course, He who creates from nothing can raise the dead.
      God created Heaven and earth in the beginning (Gen. 1:1).
Heaven and earth:
      Heaven, linguistically, is whatever is elevated and high, the highest point our sight can reach. Here we wonder if there is one heaven or many heavens.
      The first verse of the Holy Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1: 1). This shows that there are various heavens, as we pray also in the Lord's Prayer (in the Arabic version), "Our Father who is in the heavens" (Mt. 6: 9).
      St. Paul the Apostle tells us that he was caught up to the third heaven (2 Cor. 12: 2), and he mentions that this third heaven is Paradise (2 Cor. 12: 4). If Paradise is the third heaven, what are the first and the second heavens?
      The first heaven is the atmosphere surrounding the earth, which we call the heaven of the birds, where the birds fly. "They fly away like an eagle toward heaven" (Prov. 23: 5). The airplanes also plough through the sky.
      The second heaven is the solar system, where the sun, the moon, the stars, the galaxies and all planets exist. No plane can approach the sun, or it will be burnt. It is true that space ships could reach the moon, but many parts of the solar system cannot be approached by man. The discussion about the stars, the meteors and the galaxies is amazing and strange, although very little is known in this field.
      Above these three heavens is the "heaven of heavens." God's throne is in the heaven of heavens, and concerning this heaven, the Lord warned us, "Do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God's throne ..." (Mt. 5: 34). And Nicodemus said about this heaven, "No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven" (Jn. 3:13).
      Elijah ascended to heaven but not to this "heaven of heavens," which belongs to God alone. King Solomon mentioned this "heaven of heavens" in his prayer on the day of consecrating the Temple. He said, "Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You; how much less this temple which I have built?!" (1 Kg. 8: 27). We also mention the heaven of heavens in the hymn, when we sing with David the Prophet the psalm "Praise the Lord from the heavens. Praise Him in the highest ... Praise Him, you heaven of heavens" (Ps. 148: 1, 4).
      However, all these heavens are called "heaven" because of their elevation and loftiness. It is said in the Ten Commandments about the rest on the seventh day, "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day" (Ex. 20: 11). The word "made" is chosen because He created the substance first, and from this substance, He made the heavens which we see and the earth on which we dwell.
      The phrase "God created the heavens and the earth" means that He created also all those who dwelt them. He created heaven and all the angels and heavenly hosts, with all their ranks - whether angels, archangels, dominions, principalities, or powers (Col. 1: 16) as well as the Seraphim and the innumerable multitude of the heavenly hosts. He created also the earth with all that is on it.
      He created all things, visible and invisible (Col. 1:16). We can understand what is meant by the word "visible," but what does the word "invisible" mean?

The invisible:
      By this, it is meant that which we cannot see by our human senses, which see only substances, and what is not substance cannot be seen.
1. The spirits for example are among the invisible things.
      The spirits include the angels (Ps. 104: 4); many of them surround us, but we do not see them. When the angel takes a form, we see him, but as a spirit, we cannot see him. The same applies to the devils because they also are spirits, either evil or unclean spirits (Mt. 10:1, 8). They fight us, but we do not see them. Only when the devil takes a certain form, he becomes visible in that form but not in his original nature as spirit.
      In you also, as a human being, there is something visible, which is the body, and something invisible, which is the spirit; we cannot see the spirit when it comes out of the body at the time of death. When the spirit of a certain Saint appears to us (in a miracle for example), the Saint takes a form which our senses can grasp.
2. There are also certain very minute or very far things which we cannot see by our sight but by certain apparatuses.
      An example of such things is microbes, which cannot be seen with the naked eye but with microscopes or other apparatuses. Thank God that we cannot see them; otherwise we could not be able to live, especially in polluted environments and air. We are blessed by not seeing them.
      Some other things are invisible by being too far. They can only be seen by telescopes. The celestial bodies are an example, but space ships could see things that were invisible in the past. However, what is seen by satellites and space shuttles is very little of those classified under invisible things.
3. Some things are invisible at present because they are hidden, but some of these can be seen through exploration.
      Take for example the underground metals; some of which could be seen by various exploration means and by digging. Thus, we are able to take out of the ground and the rocks gold, copper, manganese, diamond, and similar metals that were invisible before being discovered. In addition, petroleum and natural gas could be discovered, as well as all the wealth in the deep waters that became available to man and became visible now.
      Moreover, under this category of invisible things, there are things within man's body which were invisible and became visible by rays, scans, MRI and other medical apparatuses.
4. Some characteristics are provided by God in human nature and although invisible, their action is evident.
      An example of this is the mind, which cannot be seen, but its action is apparent and reveals it. The conscience also is invisible, but its work is clear.
5. There are also the gifts endowed to man by God.
      The gift cannot be seen, but its action is visible. Besides, God may give some people wisdom or faith (1 Cor. 12), which we cannot see, but we can see their work which reveals their existence. 

تعليقات

أشهر الموضوعات على موسوعة الخدمة المسيحية

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