View of the early Christian church

During different historical periods there were always church fathers who proclaimed the truth about the deity and self-existence of the Lord Jesus, as well as the fact that He is co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. But there were also those who questioned and completely distorted biblical Christology. Through their views these deluded fathers deceived millions of other people. Examples will be given of true as well as false views about Jesus.
There is evidence indicating strong convictions that were entertained by the apostles and early church fathers on the eternal deity of the Lord Jesus. Kelly (1977:92-93) refers to the godly church father, Ignatius (35-107 AD), bishop of Antioch, who was later martyred for his faith, as a good source of theological thought of his time: “The centre of Ignatius’ thinking was Christ… (he) even declares that He is ‘our God’, describing Him as ‘God incarnate’… and ‘God made manifest as man’… in His pre-existent being ‘ingenerate’ (the technical term reserved to distinguish the increate God from creatures), He was the timeless, invisible, impalpable, impassable one Who for our sakes entered time and became visible, palpable and passable.” The thought of Ignatius was steeped in the Gospel of John with its strong emphasis on Christ’s unity with the Father: John 1:1-3 describes Christ as the Word that was with God since beginning, being also God Himself, and the One who has created all things that exist. John 10:30 says that Christ and His Father are one, and in John 14:9 Jesus explains to His disciples that he who has seen Him has seen the Father. In John 17:5 Jesus refers to the glory that He had with the Father before the world was.

The truth about Jesus Christ and His Word was, throughout the ages, confronted by strong opposition – not only from other religions but also from humanist ideologies with a strong basis of Greek philosophy.
 

Gnosticism

Since the time of the early Christian church theological development was strongly influenced by philosophy. Initially, it was the heathen Greek philosophy of Plato that had the greatest impact on religious thinking. Since the first century, Gnosticism developed concurrently with evangelical beliefs on the deity and incarnation of the Lord Jesus. This philosophy was derived from the concept “gnosis” (intuitive religious knowledge) and teaches that knowledge, rather than faith, is the key to salvation. This philosophy enjoyed great support until the sixth century and in that time perverted the truth of various theological concepts. It was developed with the purpose of making the Christian religion more acceptable to Greek-speaking intelligentsia, but in the process the biblical concept of God was fundamentally distorted.
The Gnostic love for knowledge was shaped by the mystic beliefs of Plato, as well as his concept of God as the “Absolute,” which is not compatible with the biblical concept of the Holy Trinity. After these views were mixed with Christian concepts it was argued that there is a singular Creator-God, the Father, and that He created Jesus as a lower order God, or even as an angel. That was a vicious attack on the deity and incarnation of the Lord Jesus. Walvoord & Zuck (1983:677) say: “Both Christ’s deity and humanity were challenged by this early Gnostic-like heresy. Those heretics diminished Christ to an angel whose ‘body’ was only apparent, not real.” But Paul defended the deity of the Lord Jesus, as well as His complete incarnation: “For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). He was fully God and fully Man.
Paul said that philosophical knowledge derived from mystical sources is futile as it is not based on the Bible. Instead of pursuing hidden knowledge outside Christ, people should endeavour to understand the mystery of the Father and of Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now this I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words… Beware lest anyone should cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:3-4,8 NKJV). Great spiritual deception came from Gnostic philosophy.
One of the fallacies which was devised to present Jesus as a created being and subordinate God is the so-called “Logos theology”. In His eternal pre-existence Jesus is, according to John 1:1, indeed described as the Word (Gr. Logos) who is also God Himself. In the Gnostic Logos theology, however, Greek philosophical concepts were borrowed to formulate the paradigm of the Absolute God in which it is alleged that God the Father created the Word and then used the Word to do the rest of His creative work. Other Scriptures were also wrongly harnessed to support this theory, e.g. by applying the Proverbs 8 exposition of God’s attribute of wisdom in such a way that it would support their view of the Word having been created.
Prof. Young (1991:35) summarises the Logos theology as follows, from which the synthesis between heathen philosophical concepts and the Bible is very obvious: “This Logos was the only-begotten of God, the Word projected forth as the instrument through whom God created, as the Wisdom who was beside Him fashioning all things… It was this Word which came to the prophets – indeed to Socrates and all genuine teachers of the truth, and in the last days, it was this Word which was incarnate in Jesus Christ.” This view of the Word is unrecognisable from Scripture, and even goes to the extreme of attributing the wisdom of Socrates (c. 470-399 BC), the father of Greek philosophy, to divine illumination by the pre-incarnate Logos. This is nothing more than pagan philosophy dressed up in Christian robes (Reeves 2003a:4).
The philosophical perversion of the Logos concept may be the reason why it is rarely used in the New Testament as a title for Jesus. (Sproul 1983:42-45) confirms that “by the time the Gospels were written the notion of the logos was a loaded philosophical category… one pregnant with meaning against the background of Greek philosophy.”
In relating the Logos theology to Proverbs 8, the wrong assumption was made that the wisdom expounded in this chapter is a description of the pre-incarnate Christ. Proverbs 8 verses 22 to 31 are accepted as Christological Scriptures, and in terms of them concluded that Jesus was created before the foundation of the world. He is depicted as a subordinate onlooker at the creation: “When he [Yahweh] prepared the heavens, I was there… when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by (beside) him” (v. 27-30). The wisdom described in Proverbs is an attribute of the Triune God and we are to regard wisdom as our sister (Prov. 7:4). It is exegetically unjustified to personify wisdom as Jesus Christ and in terms of this Scripture to regard Him as a created being.